[Senate Hearing 107-481]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-481
REDUCING THE THREAT OF CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 19, 2002
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware, Chairman
PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland JESSE HELMS, North Carolina
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon
PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota BILL FRIST, Tennessee
BARBARA BOXER, California LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia
BILL NELSON, Florida SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
Virginia
Edwin K. Hall, Staff Director
Patricia A. McNerney, Republican Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Ford, Hon. Carl W. Jr., Assistant Secretary of State for
Intelligence and Research...................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 11
Moodie, Michael, President, Chemical and Biological Arms Control
Institute...................................................... 33
Prepared statement........................................... 38
Sands, Amy, Ph.D., Deputy Director, Center for Nonproliferation
Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies........... 44
Prepared statement........................................... 49
Zelicoff, Alan P., Senior Scientist, Sandia National Laboratories 63
Prepared statement........................................... 66
(iii)
REDUCING THE THREAT OF CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
----------
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:12 a.m. in
Room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph R.
Biden, Jr., chairman of the committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Biden, Feingold, Helms, Lugar, and Frist.
The Chairman. The hearing will come to order. Carl,
welcome back to the committee. It's been a long, not a long
time since you were here, but I remember the good old days when
you were being of considerable assistance to our colleague John
Glenn and it's nice to have you back.
Today the Committee on Foreign Relations continues a
hearing in a series that began in early February, which we
entitled Securing America's Future. The key purposes of these
hearings are to engage in as sober a discussion as we can to
determine what the most urgent threats facing the United States
are and to determine how our nation should prioritize the
resources, although considerable, nonetheless limited, to
address the most eminent threats.
Two weeks ago the committee heard from a group of America's
top scientists on the potential dangers associated with so-
called dirty bombs and improvised nuclear devices. Today we
look at a threat posed by chemical and biological weapons or
CBW as it's referred to, especially in the hands of terrorists.
Last fall's anthrax attacks demonstrated that even a small
scale CBW attack can greatly disrupt our lives. Those attacks
resulted in 23 anthrax cases and five deaths, but the impact on
this country, the impact on this city, the impact on this body
far exceeded that number. The next time a CBW attack occurs the
consequences could even be graver.
In the extreme case, the Department of Defense estimates
that on the unlikely prospect that a small pox attack would
occur that could cause as many as 4 million deaths. The
intelligence community has warned that al Qaeda was working to
acquire dangerous chemical agents and toxins as well as
biological weapons. We do not know if al Qaeda succeeded in
these efforts, but we do know that they showed their trainees
how cyanide works.
And earlier this month, a self-styled anarchist was found
to be storing cyanide precursors in a Chicago subway tunnel,
which I would note parenthetically, I'm going to urge my
colleagues as early as today to take up the Amtrak legislation
for threat reduction relating to modernizing the tunnels that
Amtrak has. There are five tunnels under New York City to carry
350,000 people a day are in those tunnels. There's no
ventilation, there's no lighting and there is no means of
escape. And the same with the Baltimore tunnel.
But some threats like third world ICBMs or space warfare
are years from becoming imminent notwithstanding their threats,
but the threat of chemical and biological weapons is here today
and in my view we have to deal with it today.
As our first witness will shortly explain, a number of
nations are actively pursuing chemical and biological weapons
programs. The members of President Bush's axis of evil are on
this list and so are other nations. There's no single easy way
to roll back the proliferation of chemical and biological
weapons, but we must persist on a number of fronts. Engaging in
tough-nosed diplomacy, enforcing strong export controls agreed
upon with our allies and revitalizing the two applicable arms
control regimes, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the
Biological Weapons Convention, and applying sanctions where
appropriate and turning to our military force where necessary.
Nations can be deterred from using chemical or biological
weapons. In 1991, the first President Bush told Saddam Hussein
if Iraq dared to employ chemical weapons against U.S. troops,
the United States would leave no option off the table,
implicitly including nuclear weapons. Saddam chose to live
another day and did not use chemical weapons.
Unfortunately, deterrents may not work so well for
terrorists. Especially groups like al Qaeda which aim to kill
as many innocent victims as possible, even at the cost of their
own lives. Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson, Director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency warns that such weapons may be ``attractive
to terrorist groups intent on causing panic and inflicting
larger numbers of casualties. The psychological impact of the
recent anthrax cases in the United States did not go
unnoticed.''
How can the United States best contain and reduce this
threat? One answer lies in the arms control agreements we all
ready have at our disposal including the Chemical Weapons and
Biological Weapons Conventions. The CWC allows for both routine
and challenge inspections to detect and deter clandestine
activities. Moreover, state parties are required to enact
legislation with punitive sanctions to make CWC prohibitions
binding on their nationals living both at home and abroad.
Unfortunately, the CWC has not achieved its full potential.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the
implementing organization for CWC, has struggled with both
mismanagement and financial crises over member assessments and
reimbursements for inspections costs. The Organization has been
forced to reduce its verification activities and cut back on
industry inspections.
During five years the Convention has been in effect, no
party has requested a challenge inspection. I'm glad to hear
the Administration is closely looking at the Organization to
resolve its funding and management challenges, but we need an
effective chemical weapons regime.
We must also re-emphasize the Biological Weapons
Convention. It is not my intention here today to rehash the
debate over whether the United States should have agreed to the
draft compliance protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention
last year. I personally do believe the Administration was
needlessly confrontational, but I understand its concerns over
the protocol as drafted.
Today I want to look ahead to the reconvening of the
Biological Weapons Review Conference this November and ask how
the United States can best enhance the implementation of this
Convention? One option lies in strengthening global disease
surveillance to help detect and contain infectious outbreaks,
whether they are a result of biological weapons or natural
disease.
The Administration has proposed that BWC state parties
commit to strengthening the World Health Organization's global
alert and response network. However, many developing nations
lack the resources and the infrastructure to effectively plug
into and contribute to the WHO network.
For that reason, Senator Helms and I at the appropriate
time plan to introduce the Global Pathogen Surveillance Act of
2002. This bill would provide up to $150 million over the next
two years for necessary resources, both expertise and technical
equipment to monitor infectious disease outbreaks within their
borders, and cooperate with international investigations. I
look forward to working closely with the Administration as we
move forward on this issue.
Another means of reducing the threat of chemical and
biological weapons is to shut off access to those weapons and
their infrastructure. I've often said that Russia is a virtual
bonanza of weapons grade nuclear material that terrorists might
attempt to steal. Well, guess what folks? Russia can be just as
inviting a target for terrorists seeking chemical and
biological weapons.
Russia possesses the world's largest chemical weapons
stockpile estimated at approximately 40,000 metric tons. Eighty
percent of this stockpile consists of nerve agents. Only a few
single drops of which can kill on contact. Russia acceded to
the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, but bureaucratic
disputes and lack of funding delayed the start of destruction
activities until last year. Russia was supposed to meet by the
year 2007, the chemical weapons deadline for the destruction of
its entire stockpile. It remains doubtful if Russia can even
meet the extended 2012 deadline.
In the meantime, the security of many of these sites where
the chemical and biological weapons are stored is poor and
represents a real proliferation concern. But at least we have
handle on the size of Russia's CW stockpile. During the Cold
War, the Soviet Union also conducted a massive covert
biological program. Roughly 50 former biological weapons
institutes, mostly in Russia, are still open today possibly
containing live biological agents. Truth is we don't know.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has refused U.S. requests
for access to four former military biological institutes. And
as many as 15,000 underpaid, underemployed scientists who
worked in the former Soviet programs are now potential targets
for recruitment by rogue states and terrorists.
Over the past decade, the United States has carried out a
number of programs to help reduce the threat of biological and
chemical weapons proliferation in Russia and the former Soviet
Union. In particular, I want to salute the International
Science and Technology Centers and a more recent program, the
Bio-redirection Initiative for providing peaceful civilian
research opportunities to former Soviet scientists who
otherwise might be tempted to sell their wares to the highest
bidder.
In it's review of nonproliferation assistance at the end of
last year, this Administration recognized the value of these
programs, nudged I might add by the distinguished Senator from
Indiana and pledged continued funding. But September 11th
should've shown us that we can't afford to settle for business
as usual when it comes to nonproliferation assistance.
It is time for some creative thinking on the part of both
the executive branch and the Congress on how to help Russian
secure, consolidate and eliminate its chemical and biological
weapons stockpiles and infrastructure. Let me offer a couple
suggestions and I will invite our witnesses in the second panel
to comment on them.
We made a good start last year by authorizing the
Department of Defense to spend as much as $50 million in FY
2002 to assist Russia with its chemical weapons destruction
efforts. Russia needs to step up to the plate with its own
funding and we need to push our European allies to do more,
because it's clearly in their interest as much as ours.
But the Russian CW stockpile is a ticking time bomb. We
need to accelerate in my view U.S. funding and that may cost as
much as $10 billion over several years. A price we can afford
if we want to neutralize that menacing threat. One option for
financing this is the debt for nonproliferation swaps that
Senator Lugar and I have proposed and the Senate passed in its
Security Assistance bill would include such authorization.
I strongly encourage the Administration to use that option.
We could also turn Russia's biological and chemical weapons
scientists into public health corps to clean up dangerous
former test sites, develop and produce new vaccines and defeat
multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and other diseases. Russian
chemists and microbiologists are world class and their work in
existing U.S. programs hold great promise. But Russia's
environment and public health needs are truly urgent and
overwhelming and a massive effort to meet those needs could
easily employ up to a thousand more specialists.
Let me now introduce our witnesses at today's hearing. Our
first witness will be The Honorable Carl W. Ford, Assistant
Secretary of State for Intelligence Research and as I said my
colleagues remember a former staff member here and advisor to
Senator John Glenn.
Mr. Ford will present to the committee a threat assessment
regarding the likelihood of possible chemical or biological
weapons attacks against the United States both here at home and
in our diplomatic facilities and military posts overseas, but
obviously this is an open hearing and Mr. Ford will not discuss
some topics and may in fact decline to answer some questions
which I leave fully to his discretion.
If you're in doubt, we'll go in closed session or arrange
for a closed session meeting later. But I want to thank Mr.
Ford for agreeing on such short notice to appear before this
committee and I look forward to his testimony.
Our second panel will feature three renowned experts on
chemical and biological weapons who can expand on Mr. Ford's
threat assessment and help us figure out what we need to do.
Michael Moodie, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly,
President of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control
Institute, helped negotiate the Chemicals Weapons Convention
when he was Assistant Director of Arms Control and Disarmament
under the first Bush Administration.
He is equally proficient in the Biological Weapons
Convention and I welcome his advice on how we can better
utilize these two arms control regimes if he thinks we can. And
Dr. Amy Sands is Deputy Director of the Center for
Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute in
California. And if I had to be a director of anything anywhere,
I'd like to do it at Monterey. What a magnificent place to do
it. I've had the pleasure of speaking there several times.
Dr. Sands who was Assistant Director of ACDA under the
Clinton Administration, will discuss how we can minimize the
likelihood that terrorists will gain access to and employ
chemical and biological weapons.
And finally, Dr. Alan P. Zelicoff, Senior Scientist at the
Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. He can update the
committee on how the United States might best protect against
and respond to a chemical or biological weapons attack. With
that I will now turn to Senator Helms and then we'll move to
the witness. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Helms. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You have certainly
given a wake up call to the people who are not bothered by the
threats by chemical and biological weapons in the hands of
rogue states and terrorist groups. I commend you on your
statement and I think it ought to be inserted into the record
and I'll be glad to do that if you want me to.
The anthrax attacks this past fall have underscored the
peril of all of these threats highlighting the need to deal
with them in a more direct and determined manner. It's clearly
preferable to deter and prevent and defend against a threat in
the first place rather than deal with the chaos and death and
destruction after the fact.
We can deter the development and use of these weapons by
making it crystal clear that to use them against the United
States will expose the attacker to the full retaliatory
response of our military including the potential use of our
most destructive strategic weapons. I hope that never happens.
I think we all do.
The President is making this a very clear policy of the
United States and I commend him for that. Should the deterrence
fail, however, the likelihood of a chemical or biological
weapons attack can be minimized through strong export controls
and nonproliferation regimes that ensure that terrorist groups
and rogue states will not acquire the technology in the first
place, along with the expertise to build and deliver these
heinous weapons.
Now, our own government meanwhile must do a better job of
controlling sensitive dual use weaponry. The United States also
must pursue initiatives in the states of the former Soviet
Union, we all know that, in order to secure dangerous materials
and to keep scientists gainfully employed so that neither can
or will be used by rogue states or anybody else to build
weapons of mass destruction.
And we must cause the Russians and the Chinese to halt
their transfers of sensitive items and material that are
flowing to many of these countries. Mr. Chairman, now you have
indicated in your statement, it's critical that we never lose
sight of the fact that the United States can prevent a nuclear,
biological or chemical holocaust by building a robust missile
defense system capable of defending if not deterring such an
attack.
I don't know whether you mentioned it earlier in your
statement or not, but a recent national intelligence estimate
indicated that Iran, Iraq and North Korea, if you will the axis
of evil, are building long range missiles and that they have
active weapons of mass destruction programs on our hands that
will soon pose a direct threat to us.
It therefore makes sense I think to spend some of our
defense resources to develop a missile defense system. In any
event, we must not surrender to the notion that some of these
threats are more likely than others and that they therefore
require the greatest share of resources. When it comes to
America's security, I think we must be prepared to deal with
all threats and to address them with every bit of the strength
and purpose that we possess.
And I join you, sir, in welcoming our witnesses for being
here and as a matter of fact I thank them for doing it because
I know it's an impingement on their time, but thank you for
coming all of you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator. Mr. Ford, before you
begin, let me apologize to Michael Moodie for mispronouncing
his name. Michael, you can call me Biden when you get up here
if it makes you feel any better. Be fair. Carl, the floor's
yours.
STATEMENT OF HON. CARL W. FORD, JR., ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
STATE FOR INTELLIGENCE AND RESEARCH
Mr. Ford. Mr. Chairman, Senator Helms, Senator Lugar, as a
former member of the committee staff, I've always been
delighted to come back and share my thoughts and information
before the committee. It's always been a delight. I have been
troubled that this might be the first exception where it wasn't
all that delightful.
I clearly agree with the committee's emphasizing this very
important threat of chemical and biological weapons, but I'm
really not sure I'm up to the challenge of presenting that
threat adequately and coherently and particularly at an
unclassified level.
One, I can't think of an intelligence problem more
difficult at any level than dealing with biological weapons and
chemical weapons. It is a serious concern of the entire
intelligence community. A lot of resources are applied to the
problem, it is a hard one.
The second issue has to do with even when I can give you
some of my personal judgments and beliefs based on having seen
that information, the sources and methods used to get most of
our findings are so sensitive that the evidence I'll present is
sketchy at best and that for the most part, you'll have to take
on faith that I'm reflecting a deeper study of the information.
I urge you to ask us for later, either as individuals or as a
group to have a more detailed intelligence presentation from
CIA, DIA as well as INR to give you a full appreciation for how
dangerous we think this is.
What I'd like to do if you'll indulge me is I'll make a few
more informal comments and sort of set the scene and then very
briefly summarize the major portions of my written presentation
and ask if you would to take the full testimony and put it in
the record.
The Chairman. It will be.
Mr. Ford. The issue itself is very complicated. I think
that some preparatory remarks are in order so that at least you
understand my biases and my conceptual framework so that when I
make these statements, you'll at least know where I'm coming
from.
I arbitrarily divide chemical and biological weapons into
basically three types, having a lot to do with their delivery.
The first group and in fact the one that we have the most
information on, the one that is in the greatest numbers around
the world: battlefield weapons. Weapons that have been produced
by a number of countries since World War I that are designed to
be delivered by military aircraft, artillery, or missiles.
These normally are designed for specific battlefield targets,
to disrupt the battle area, protect a particular zone, or
provide the opportunity for forces to maneuver.
Even so our own commanders who have looked at the problems
of Russian tactics and our own and thought about warfare and
the age of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, believe
that they're uncontrollable. And while you may hope to disrupt
the maneuver of your enemy, you may also kill a lot of your own
people and have your own maneuver limited. So even the
battlefield weapons were, at least in our system, always more
for deterrence. Hopefully we would never have to use these
weapons. If we did, it was always seen as a last resort sort of
situation.
They also, because of their military nature, may be easy to
steal, but I would say even that is very difficult. They are
hard to deliver by any other than a military organization so
that while there are a lot of these weapons around, that's
probably not the best chance for a terrorist to get a hold of
chemical and biological weapons. They're closely guarded even
in the most lax systems and even if you got one, what to do
with it is a real problem.
A second category are what I call terrorist weapons. The
anthrax in the letters would be an example, a very concrete
example here in the United States of a terrorist weapon. It
didn't kill a lot of people, but it sure psychologically had a
huge impact and scared a lot of people and made us recognize
and realize the dangers of chemical and biological weapons.
Another example of a terrorist weapon would be a nuclear
isotope or nuclear waste sort of bomb that killed a few people
through immediate contact, maybe the radiation would affect a
few people, but we're talking about dozens rather than
thousands. While clearly something that we worry about, it's
more in the nature of the psychological damage and the impact
that it might have.
The third category is weapons of mass destruction. And at
least I personally feel that these are the ones that while most
unlikely to be used are the ones that are the scariest and that
we have to be certain that we understand and are carefully
protecting ourselves against. Here I mean the notion of being
able to attack our livestock or our agricultural areas or
poison the water of an entire city where we're talking about
tens of thousands of casualties from chemical or biological
weapons.
Those are the ones that terrify us the most. Clearly they
are ones that we think of when we think of terrorists, but I
would argue that terrorists alone based on what we know from al
Qaeda and various other groups, almost certainly would have to
have state assistance in order to have those sorts of weapons
of mass destruction. So you're really talking about the
convergence of the people on our bad list and terrorists coming
together when you get to the point of weapons of mass
destruction.
So with those introductory comments, let me just go through
quickly some of the countries that we are most concerned about
on these various types of chemical and biological weapons,
battlefield, terrorist and weapons of mass destruction.
The first one on my list and I think on most people's list
is Iraq. Given Iraq's past behavior, it's likely that Baghdad
has reconstituted programs prohibited under UN Security Council
resolutions. Since the suspension of UN inspection in December
of 1998, Baghdad has had more than enough time to reinitiate
it's CW programs. Programs that have demonstrated the ability
to produce deadly CW before they were disrupted by Operation
Desert Storm, Desert Fox and United Nations inspections.
Iraq's failure to submit an accurate full, final and
complete disclosure in either 1995 or 1997 coupled with its
extensive concealment efforts, suggest that the BW program also
has continued. Without inspection and monitoring of programs,
however, it's difficult to determine their current status.
One of the reasons, of course, that Iraq bothers us in
particular is that it is one of the countries that's actually
used weapons against other forces and against its own people.
So that not only do Iraqis have a capability and an intention,
they've also done it and that's a small group of countries in
that category.
The second one on my list is Iran. Iran, a state party to
the Chemical Weapons Convention, already has manufactured and
stockpiled chemical weapons including blister, blood, choking
and probably nerve agents and the bombs and artillery shells to
deliver them. Tehran continues to seek production and
technology, training, expertise, equipment and chemicals from
entities in Russia and China that could be used to help Iran
reach its goal in indigenous nerve agent production capability.
Tehran continued to seek considerable dual use bio-
technical materials, equipment and expertise from abroad
primarily from entities in Russia and Western Europe ostensibly
for civilian uses. We believe that this equipment and know-how
could be applied to Iran's biological warfare program. Iran
probably began its offensive BW program during the Iran-Iraq
War and likely has evolved beyond agent research and
development to the capability to produce small quantities of
agent. Iran may have some limited capability to weaponize BW.
North Korea has a longstanding chemical weapons program.
North Korea's domestic chemical industry can produce bulk
quantities of nerve, blister, choking and blood agents. We
believe it has a sizable stockpile of agents and weapons. These
weapons could be on a variety of delivery vehicles including
ballistic missiles, aircraft, artillery projectiles and
unconventional weapons.
North Korea has not acceded to the Chemical Weapons
Convention, nor is it expected to do so any time soon. While
North Korea has acceded to the Biological Weapons Convention,
it nonetheless has pursued biological warfare capabilities over
the last four decades. North Korea likely has a basic bio-
technical infrastructure that could support the production of
infectious biological agents. It's believed to possess a
munitions production infrastructure that would allow it to
weaponize agents and may have biological weapons available for
military use.
Lybia continues its efforts to obtain technologies and
expertise from foreign sources. Outside assistance is critical
to its chemical and biological weapons program and the
suspension of UN sanctions in 1999 has allowed Tripoli to
expand its procurement effort with old primarily Western
European contacts with expertise, parts and precursor chemicals
for sale.
Syria has also vigorously pursued the development of
chemical and to a lesser extent biological weapons to counter
Israel's superior conventional forces and nuclear weapons.
Syria believes that its chemical and missile forces deter
Israeli attacks. Syria has a longstanding chemical weapons
program and is pursuing biological weapons. Syria depends on
foreign sources for key elements of its chemical and biological
warfare program, including precursor chemicals and key
production equipment.
The U.S. has pressed possible supplier states to Syria to
stop such trade, thereby making acquisition of such materials
more difficult. The 33 nation Australia Group coordinates
adoption of stricter export controls in many countries. As I'm
sure you appreciate, the real complexity here is that many, if
not most, of the precursors and ingredients in chemical and
biological weapons can be used in totally non-dangerous and
medical and chemical sorts of experiments, so that it's very
difficult other than from intelligence sources to know what the
intention of the purchaser of this material is.
The United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited
developmental offensive biological warfare research and
development effort. Cuba has provided dual use bio-technology
to rogue states. We're concerned that such technology could
support BW programs in those states.
We call on Cuba to cease all BW applicable cooperation with
rogue states and to fully comply with all its obligations under
the Biological Weapons Convention. At least at this point, we
don't see Cuba involved in chemical weapons research and
development.
Serious concerns remain about the status of Russian
chemical and biological warfare programs. Chairman Biden went
over those very accurately in his opening statement. Moscow has
declared the world's largest stockpile of chemical agents--
39,969 metric tons of chemical agent to be exact, mostly
weaponized, including artillery, aerial bombs, rockets and
missile warheads.
According to the Russian CWC declaration, all former Soviet
chemical weapons are stored at seven locations in Russia. In
the late '80s and early 1990s, it carried out an extensive
consolidation process of chemical warfare material from sites
within Russia and from non-Russian locations.
Russian officials do not deny research has continued, but
assert that it aims to develop defenses against chemical
weapons, a purpose that is not banned by the CWC. Many of the
components for new binary agents development by the former
Soviet Union are not on the CWC schedule of chemicals and have
legitimate civilian applications, clouding their association
with chemical weapons use. However, under the CWC all chemical
weapons are banned whether or not they are on CWC schedules.
The former Soviet offensive biological program was the
world's largest and it consisted of both military facilities
and non-military research and development institutes. This
program employed thousands of scientists, engineers and
technicians throughout the former Soviet Union with some
biological warfare agents developed and weaponized as early as
the 1950s.
The Russian government has committed to ending the former
Soviet BW program. It has closed or abandoned plants outside
the Russian Federation and these facilities have been engaged
through cooperative threat reduction programs. Nevertheless we
remain concerned that Russia's offensive biological warfare
capabilities remain.
The United States remains concerned by the threat of
proliferation both of biological warfare expertise and related
hardware from Russia. Russian scientists, many of whom either
are unemployed or unpaid for an extended period, may be
vulnerable to recruitment by states trying to establish
biological warfare programs. The availability of worldwide
information exchange via the Internet facilitates this process.
I believe that the Chinese have an advanced chemical
warfare program including research and development production
and weaponization capabilities. Chinese military forces have a
good understanding of chemical warfare doctrine, having studied
the tactics and doctrine of the former Soviet Union. Chinese
military forces conduct defensive chemical warfare training and
are prepared to operate in contaminated environments.
I also believe that China's current inventory of chemical
agents includes the full range of traditional agents and China
is researching more advanced agents. It has a wide variety of
delivery systems for these, including tube artillery, rockets,
mortars, landmines, aerial bombs, sprayers and SRBMs. China
acceded to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in 1984,
though many believe its declaration under the BWC confidence
building measures were inaccurate and incomplete.
China has consistently claimed that it has never
researched, manufactured, produced or possessed biological
weapons and that it would never do so. However, China possesses
an advanced bio-technology infrastructure and the bio-
containment facilities necessary to perform research and
development on lethal pathogens. It's possible that China has
maintained the offensive biological warfare program it's
believed to have had before acceding to the BWC.
Finally, terrorist interest in chemical and biological
weapons has been growing and probably will increase in the near
term. The threat is real and proven. The ease of acquisition or
production of some of these weapons and the scale and terror
that they can cause will likely fuel interest in using them to
terrorize.
The transport and dispersal techniques also are manageable
and can be made effective easily as seen recently in using the
mail as a delivery system to spread anthrax. Many of the
technologies associated with the development of chemical and
biological agents have legitimate civil applications.
In addition, the proliferation of such weapons raises the
possibility that some states or rogue entities within these
states could provide chemical or biological weapons to
terrorists. It remains unlikely that a state sponsor would
provide such a weapon to a terrorist group. But an extremist
group with no ties to a particular state, but which likely does
have friends in state institutions, could acquire or steal such
a weapon and attempt to use it.
We have not completed our study of al Qaeda in Afghanistan
and their chemical and biological capabilities. So that it's
too soon to give you a complete picture, but at least so far, I
think that I would summarize it as that our basic judgment
remains the same: That they had an almost insatiable appetite
for information on biological and chemical weapons, both how to
do it and how to deliver it.
They also were interested in talking to a wide range of
experts from neighboring countries or co-religionists. We find
no evidence so far that they had successfully developed
weaponized chemical or biological agents, but I have to admit
that at least so far, we feel as we did after we got into Iraq
and found out after Desert Storm how much we had missed. I
think that many of us are having the same reaction in
Afghanistan, that while they didn't succeed, their interests
and activities were higher than many of us had imagined until
we saw the evidence and we still are looking. Many of the
documents and areas have not been fully examined. So I'll have
to only give you a partial judgment.
At this point, Mr. Chairman, I will ask that you put the
complete testimony in the record and be happy to take any
question that you or other members of the committee may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ford follows:]
Prepared Statement of Carl W. Ford, Jr., Assistant Secretary of State
for Intelligence and Research
Chairman Biden, Senator Helms, I am particularly pleased to come
before you today, as I spent many years working for the Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations. I enjoyed those years, and am pleased
now to contribute to your work again, if in a different way.
More states have credible chemical and biological warfare (CBW)
capabilities than ever before. Advanced CBW capabilities and the
widespread public understanding of U.S. vulnerabilities since the
anthrax attacks which followed on the events of September 2001 makes
their use all the more likely. CBW threats challenge not only our
homeland and Americans overseas, but our allies as well. Collaborative
international efforts to meet, reduce and defeat the use of chemical or
biological weapons have become essential. The United States remains
committed to enacting new domestic laws and strengthening treaties and
international WMD regimes to prevent and deter CBW development and use.
I will highlight those countries not in compliance with their
international obligations. The Administration has raised this important
issue with a number of countries bilaterally.
Since the worldwide CBW threat is growing in breadth and
sophistication, the use of these weapons anywhere in the world would
affect the United States. Crude but lethal attacks can be small and
could strike us in our homes here or in American communities abroad.
More than a dozen nations, including China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North
Korea, Russia and Syria have the capabilities to produce chemical and
biological agents. Former Soviet biological and chemical facilities
still exist in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, though none is
active now. Many have been engaged by U.S. threat reduction programs to
try to control proliferation of equipment, materials and knowledge.
Nevertheless, it will always remain difficult to assess how successful
we have been in preventing proliferation--especially since basic CBW
production does not require large, sophisticated programs or
facilities. Additionally, the worldwide exchange of information via the
Internet facilitates this process.
How likely is the use of CBW?
Compared to nuclear weapons, chemical weapons (CW) and biological
weapons (SW) are easier to acquire and the inherently dual-use nature
of many goods and technologies needed to produce SW and CW makes their
assembly easier. That makes it likely that we will confront such a
threat in the future--again most likely by terrorists.
Chemical agent development is threatening, and the development and
production of traditional chemical agents may be easier because their
formulations are more widespread than biological compounds. The
building blocks of any chemical weapons program come from the chemical
industry. Precursor chemical procurement can be difficult for a state
that cannot produce them indigenously. Nevertheless, World War I-era CW
agents are not difficult to acquire and diagrams and descriptions of
chemical weapons from expired patents remain available in public
libraries or on the Internet.
Virtually all the equipment, technology and materials needed for
biological agent research and development and production are available
on the open market as well as in the secondary markets of the world.
Vaccine research and disease treatment require essentially the same
equipment. Because biological weapons are relatively cheap, easy to
disguise within commercial ventures, and potentially as devastating as
nuclear weapons, states seeking to deter nations with superior
conventional or nuclear forces find them particularly attractive.
Therefore BW will probably continue to gain importance since it can
kill or incapacitate military forces or civilian populations, while
leaving infrastructure intact but contaminated. Its great disadvantage,
that it can also attack one's own side, may be blunted by advanced
vaccination programs. Traditional controls, similar to those used for
fissionable material or delivery systems, cannot be effective when
dangerous pathogens occur naturally and do not depend on manufacturing
settings for production. Procuring BW agents and using them can be done
in different ways with different effects. While developing an effective
biological weapon is more difficult than popular discussion may
indicate, the degree of difficulty depends on the agent chosen and the
sophistication of the delivery method. Biological weapons have been
developed by states for many operational uses, as well as by terrorist
groups.
In addition to direct threats to the American people The United
States is vulnerable to indirect attack. For example, the United States
relies on modern intensive farming production methods that involve
large numbers of healthy susceptible livestock in geographically
concentrated areas, a centralized feed supply, and rapid movement of
animals to markets. In addition, U.S. crops generally lack genetic
diversity, leaving them vulnerable to disease. An anti-livestock BW
attack could result in multiple outbreaks throughout the United States
before the disease is diagnosed. In most cases, confirmation of a
foreign animal disease would result in immediate termination of exports
and potential banning of U.S. livestock products by foreign
governments, probably accompanied by killing infected and exposed
livestock. The economic impact would be enormous; as many as one in
eight U.S. jobs is directly involved in some form of agriculture, from
food production to delivery to retail sales.
Chemical and Biological weapons have been used throughout history,
and we are keenly aware of the recent anthrax attacks as well as past
Iraqi use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988 as well as the
1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway. The threat is
real, dangerous and likely to occur again.
Which nations possess weaponized stocks of chemical and biological
agents?
Iraq
Given Iraq's past behavior, it is likely that Baghdad has
reconstituted programs prohibited under UN Security Council
Resolutions. Since the suspension of UN inspections in December of
1998, Baghdad has had more than enough time to reinitiate its CW
programs, programs that had demonstrated the ability to produce deadly
CW before they were disrupted by Operation Desert Storm, Desert Fox,
and UNSCOM inspections. Iraq's failure to submit an accurate Full,
Final, and Complete Disclosure (FFCD) in either 1995 or 1997, coupled
with its extensive concealment efforts, suggest that the BW program
also has continued. Without inspection and monitoring of programs,
however, it is difficult to determine their current status.
Since the Gulf War Iraq has rebuilt key portions of its chemical
production infrastructure for industrial and commercial use at
locations previously identified with their CW program. Iraq has also
rebuilt a plant that produces castor oil, allegedly for brake fluid.
The mash left over from this production, however, could be used to
produce ricin, a biological toxin. Iraq has attempted to purchase
numerous dual-use items for, or under the guise of, legitimate civilian
use. This equipment--in principle subject to UN scrutiny--also could be
diverted for WMD purposes. Since the suspension of UN inspections in
December 1998, the risk of diversion has increased. After Desert Fox,
Baghdad again instituted a reconstruction effort on those facilities
destroyed by the U.S. bombing, including several critical missile
production complexes and former dual-use CW production facilities. In
addition, Iraq appears to be installing or repairing dual-use equipment
at CW-related facilities. Some of these facilities could be converted
fairly quickly for production of CW agents.
UNSCOM reported to the Security Council in December 1998 that Iraq
also continued to withhold information related to its CW program. For
example, Baghdad seized from UNSCOM inspectors an Air Force document
discovered by UNSCOM that indicated that Iraq had not consumed as many
CW munitions during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s as had been declared
by Baghdad. This discrepancy indicates that Iraq may have hidden an
additional 6,000 CW munitions.
In 1995, Iraq admitted to having an offensive BW program and
submitted the first in a series of FFCDs that were supposed to have
revealed the full scope of its BW program. According to UNSCOM, these
disclosures are incomplete and filled with inaccuracies. Since the full
scope and nature of Iraq's BW program was not verified, UNSCOM has
reported that Iraq maintains a knowledge base and industrial
infrastructure that could be used to produce quickly a large amount of
BW agents at any time. Iraq also has continued dual-use research that
could improve BW agent R&D capabilities. With the absence of a
monitoring regime and Iraq's growing industrial self-sufficiency, we
remain concerned that Iraq may again be producing biological warfare
agents.
Iraq has worked on its L-29 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) program,
which involves converting L-29 jet trainer aircraft originally acquired
from Eastern Europe. In the past, Iraq has conducted flights of the L-
29, possibly to test system improvements or to train new pilots. These
refurbished trainer aircraft are believed to have been modified for
delivery of chemical or, more likely, biological warfare agents.
Iran
Iran, a State Party to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC),
already has manufactured and stockpiled chemical weapons--including
blister, blood, choking, and probably nerve agents, and the bombs and
artillery shells to deliver them. Tehran continues to seek production
technology, training, expertise, equipment, and chemicals from entities
in Russia and China that could be used to help Iran reach its goal an
indigenous nerve agent production capability.
Tehran continued to seek considerable dual-use biotechnical
materials, equipment, and expertise from abroad--primarily from
entities in Russia and Western Europe--ostensibly for civilian uses. We
believe that this equipment and know-how could be applied to Iran's
biological warfare (SW) program. Iran probably began its offensive BW
program during the Iran-Iraq war, and likely has evolved beyond agent
research and development to the capability to produce small quantities
of agent. Iran may have some limited capability to weaponize BW.
North Korea
North Korea has a long-standing chemical weapons program. North
Korea's domestic chemical industry can produce bulk quantities of
nerve, blister, choking, and blood agents. We believe it has a sizable
stockpile of agents and weapons. These weapons could be on a variety of
delivery vehicles, including ballistic missiles, aircraft, artillery
projectiles and unconventional weapons. North Korea has not acceded to
the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), nor is it expected to do so any
time soon.
While North Korea has acceded to the Biological Weapons Convention
(BWC), it nonetheless has pursued biological warfare capabilities over
the last four decades. North Korea likely has a basic biotechnical
infrastructure that could support the production of infectious
biological agents. It is believed to possess a munitions production
infrastructure that would allow it to weaponize agents and may have
biological weapons available for military deployment.
Libya
Libya continues its efforts to obtain technologies and expertise
from foreign sources. Outside assistance is critical to its chemical
and biological weapons programs, and the suspension of UN sanctions in
1999 has allowed Tripoli to expand its procurement effort with old-
primarily West European--contacts with expertise, parts, and precursor
chemicals for sale. Libya still seeks an offensive CW capability and an
indigenous production capability for weapons. Evidence suggests Libya
also seeks the capability to develop and produce BW agents. Libya is a
state party to the BWC and may soon join the CWC, however this likely
will not mean the end to Libya's ambition to develop CBW.
Syria
Syria has also vigorously pursued the development of chemical--and
to a lesser extent biological--weapons to counter Israel's superior
conventional forces and nuclear weapons. Syria believes that its
chemical and missile forces deter Israeli attacks.
Syria has a long-standing chemical warfare program, first developed
in the l970s. Unlike Iran, Iraq, and Libya, Syria has never employed
chemical agents in a conflict. It has a stockpile of the nerve agent
sarin and may be trying to develop advanced nerve agents as well. In
future years, Syria will likely try to improve its infrastructure for
producing and storing chemical agents. It now probably has weaponized
sarin into aerial bombs and SCUD missile warheads, giving Syria the
capability to use chemical agents against Israeli targets. Syria has
not signed the CWC.
Syria is pursuing biological weapons. It has an adequate
biotechnical infrastructure to support a small biological warfare
program. Without significant foreign assistance, it is unlikely that
Syria could advance to the manufacture of significant amounts of
biological weapons for several years. Syria has signed the BWC.
Syria depends on foreign sources for key elements of its chemical
and biological warfare program, including precursor chemicals and key
production equipment. The U.S. has pressed possible supplier states to
Syria to stop such trade, thereby making acquisition of such materials
more difficult. The 33-nation Australia Group coordinates adoption of
stricter export controls in many countries.
Cuba
The United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited,
developmental offensive biological warfare research and development
effort. Cuba has provided dual-use biotechnology to rogue states. We
are concerned that such technology could support BW programs in those
states. We call on Cuba to cease all BW-applicable cooperation with
rogue states and to fully comply with all its obligations under the
Biological Weapons Convention.
Russia
Serious concerns remain about the status of Russian chemical and
biological warfare programs, the accuracy of the information Russia
provided in its declarations, and the willingness of the Russian
defense establishment to eliminate these capabilities. Further, given
that Russia still faces serious economic and political challenges and
the large number of weapons involved, the possibility that some
Russians might sell chemical and biological materials, technologies and
knowledge to other countries or groups continues to exist.
Russia has stated publicly that it opposes proliferation of
chemical and biological weapons. Because of its economic situation and
serious financial shortfalls, Russia remains concerned about the costs
of implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. It believes the
high destruction costs of its large chemical weapons stockpile requires
Western assistance.
Moscow has declared the world's largest stockpile of chemical
agents: 39,969 metric tons of chemical agent, mostly weaponized,
including artillery, aerial bombs, rockets, and missile warheads. U.S.
estimates of the Russian stockpile generally are still larger. The
inventory includes a wide variety of nerve and blister agents in
weapons and stored in bulk. Some Russian chemical weapons incorporate
agent mixtures, while others have added thickening agents to increase
the time of contamination on the target.
According to the Russian CWC declaration, all former Soviet
chemical weapons are stored at seven locations in Russia, mostly in the
Volga/Ural section of the country. During the late 1980s and early
1990s, it carried out an extensive consolidation process of chemical
warfare material, from sites within Russia and from non-Russian
locations.
Russian officials do not deny research has continued but assert
that it aims to develop defenses against chemical weapons, a purpose
that is not banned by the CWC. Many of the components for new binary
agents developed by the former Soviet Union are not on the CWC's
schedules of chemicals and have legitimate civil applications, clouding
their association with chemical weapons use. However, under the CWC,
all chemical weapons are banned,' whether or not they are on the CWC
schedules.
The former Soviet offensive biological program was the world's
largest and consisted of both military facilities and nonmilitary
research and development institutes. This program employed thousands of
scientists, engineers, and technicians throughout the former Soviet
Union, with some biological warfare agents developed and weaponized as
early as the 1950s. The Russian government has committed to ending the
former Soviet BW program. It has closed or abandoned plants outside the
Russian Federation and these facilities have been engaged through
cooperative threat reduction programs. Nevertheless, we remain
concerned about Russia's offensive biological warfare capabilities
remain.
Key components of the former Soviet program remain largely intact
and may support a possible future mobilization capability for the
production of biological agents and delivery systems. Moreover, work
outside the scope of legitimate biological defense activity may be
occurring now at selected facilities within Russia. Such activity, if
offensive in nature, would contravene the BWC, to which the former
Soviet government is a signatory. It would also contradict statements
by top Russian political leaders that offensive activity has ceased.
The United States remains concerned by the threat of proliferation,
both of biological warfare expertise and related hardware, from Russia.
Russian scientists, many of whom either are unemployed or unpaid for an
extended period, may be vulnerable to recruitment by states trying to
establish biological warfare programs. The availability of worldwide
information exchange via the Internet facilitates this process.
Russian entities remain a significant source of dual use
biotechnology, chemicals, production technology, and equipment for
Iran. Russia's biological and chemical expertise makes it an attractive
target for Iranians seeking technical information and training on BW
and CW agent production processes.
China
I believe that the Chinese have an advanced chemical warfare
program, including research and development, production, and
weaponization capabilities. Chinese military forces have a good
understanding of chemical warfare doctrine, having studied the tactics
and doctrine of the former Soviet Union. Chinese military forces
conduct defensive chemical warfare training and are prepared to operate
in contaminated environments. In the near future, China is likely to
achieve the necessary expertise and delivery capability to integrate
chemical weapons successfully into overall military operations.
I believe that China's current inventory of chemical agents
includes the full range of traditional agents, and China is researching
more advanced agents. It has a wide variety of delivery systems for
chemical agents, including tube artillery, rockets, mortars, landmines,
aerial bombs, sprayers, and SRBMs. China signed the Chemical Weapons
Convention in January 1993, and ratified it shortly after the U.S.
ratification in April 1997.
China acceded to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in
1984, though many believe its declarations under the BWC confidence-
building measures inaccurate and incomplete. China has consistently
claimed that it has never researched, manufactured, produced, or
possessed biological weapons and that it would never do so. However,
China possesses an advanced biotechnology infrastructure and the
biocontainment facilities necessary to perform research and development
on lethal pathogens. It is possible that China has maintained the
offensive biological warfare program it is believed to have had before
acceding to the BWC.
What is the potential access of international terrorist groups to these
stocks and capability to produce and employ CBW?
Terrorist interest in chemical and biological weapons has been
growing and probably will increase in the near term. The threat is real
and proven. The ease of acquisition or production of some of these
weapons and the scale and terror they can cause, will likely fuel
interest in using them to terrorize. The transport and dispersal
techniques also are manageable and can be made effective easily, as
seen recently in using the mail as a delivery system to spread anthrax.
Many of the technologies associated with the development of
chemical and biological agents, have legitimate civil applications. The
increased availability of these technologies, particularly if a group
is already in the United States and therefore not subject to many of
the controls in place that monitor and limit the export of these
technologies, coupled with the relative ease of producing chemical or
biological agents, makes the threat very real.
In addition, the proliferation of such weapons raises the
possibility that some states or rogue entities within these states
could provide chemical or biological weapons to terrorists. It remains
unlikely that a state sponsor would provide such a weapon to a
terrorist group. But an extremist group with no ties to a particular
state (but which likely does have friends in state institutions) could
acquire or steal such a weapon and attempt to use it.
How well can the U.S. monitor the threat?
The proliferation of chemical and biological weapons continues to
change in ways that make it more difficult to monitor and control,
increasing the risk of substantial surprise. Countries and terrorists
determined to maintain and develop these capabilities are demonstrating
greater proficiency in the use of denial and deception efforts.
State programs have been placing significant emphasis on self-
sufficiency. In bolstering their domestic production capabilities, and
thereby reducing their dependence on others, they can better insulate
their programs against interdiction and disruption. Although these
indigenous capabilities may not always substitute well for foreign
imports--particularly for more advanced technologies--in many cases
they may prove adequate.
In addition, as their domestic capabilities grow, traditional
recipients of technology could become new suppliers of technology and
expertise to others. We are increasingly concerned about ``secondary
proliferation'' from maturing state-sponsored programs, such as those
in Iran and North Korea. These countries and others not members of the
Australia Group do not adhere to its export constraints. Apart from
governments, private companies, scientists, and engineers from
countries such as China and Russia may provide CBW-related assistance
to countries or terrorist organizations. Weak or unenforceable national
export controls, especially on dual-use technology and goods, coupled
with the growing availability of technology, makes the spread of CBW
easier, and therefore more likely.
Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, I cannot assure you that we can
predict and protect against the threats of CBW attack on the Homeland
or American bases, embassies, and interests abroad. The technology for
CBW is too widely available and the precursors too widespread for us to
track. Such weapons tend to be clumsy, subject to vagaries of wind,
weather, and ventilation systems. Moreover, the users rarely have any
immunity from them. We must worry, however, that in the hands of a
fanatic, CW or BW agents could cause great loss of life.
I look forward to you questions.
The Chairman. Without objection we place it in the record
and I'd suggest if the Chairman doesn't mind we have 10-minute
rounds. There's only three of us. We could coherently follow-up
on some questions.
Let me say, Mr. Secretary, at the outset, I appreciate the
way you have segmented your presentation and in a sense what,
Senator Helms obviously he speaks for himself, but what Senator
Helms and I are attempting to do in a way, my words not his, is
sort of provide a glossary and a vocabulary for our colleagues
on how to begin to get a handle on this issue.
We both agree that this is notwithstanding the degree to
which we each support or don't support national missile defense
and how fast we move it, et cetera. This is, irrespective of
that, whether we got full bore or we slow or whatever, we both
believe this is an incredibly urgent problem that we have to
attend to and it has not, at least speaking for myself, I don't
think it's sunk into the consciousness of our colleagues or the
country how urgent this concern is.
And so what I don't want to do, though, and neither of us
want to do is unduly alarm the public. So we're trying to be as
straightforward as we can and to get down if we can and we're
going to have many of these hearings, try to determine whether
there's an emerging consensus among you and your colleagues
behind you and others in this country and around the world as
to what are the most likely threats, what are the things, how
likely are they and what do they have to be in combination with
to come to fruition.
And that's why I quite frankly like your, as you said it
was your way of looking at it, battlefield weapons, terrorist
weapons and weapons of mass destruction. And so as I go through
my questions here, I want you to understand that if you know
the purpose, you may be able to help me if I don't ask the
question precisely the way to elicit the answer that you being
around this place long enough know I'm trying to--the issue I'm
trying to get my arms around.
And so you had indicated that in your statement, you talk
about the various things we can do to deal with all of this
including, and I'll get back to it, an arsenal of response
including arms control being part of the mix, but let me leave
that aside for the moment.
Why would, in a generic sense, why would a terrorist group
like al Qaeda, let's just pick al Qaeda. Why would a terrorist
group like al Qaeda in your view need the help of a state, a
sponsor in effect, to be able to utilize a chemical and
biological weapons of mass destruction?
Your definition of that is it kills a whole lot of people.
Anthrax is not a weapon of mass destruction necessarily at
least as was use of the mail, but obviously certain pathogens
released into the atmosphere in sufficient quantities,
obviously certain chemical weapons dispersed in sufficient
quantities could in fact have a devastating impact in terms of
the number of people killed.
So just muse with us a moment why for the bigger bang for
the buck for the real serious fall out why would an al Qaeda
need, hypothetically, one of the states we mentioned to be
sponsor, in effect, to their effort?
Mr. Ford. Well, I must make it clear that I'm not expert
on chemical and biological weapons and I obviously, like you,
have been compelled to try to think about this issue more and
more, particularly after 9/11.
My sense is that getting ahold of small quantities of
chemical and biological weapons material is difficult but
clearly within the capability over time for major terrorist
groups like al Qaeda, Hezbollah and others. And we've seen in
several places in the world that people are crazy enough or
committed enough to blow themselves up or to kill themselves in
order to make a point.
And when you talk about a few dozen people, or even a few
more than that, those types of actions are quite possible by
terrorist groups because you don't have to have the
organization and planning a sophisticated device. It can be a
very primitive device equivalent to the conventional weapon of
strapping dynamite around your waist and going into a pizza
restaurant and blowing yourself up.
And I don't belittle that because as we saw with anthrax,
it has a huge impact. If that happened in Detroit or if it
happened in LA, it would have a huge impact on Americans'
perceptions of their safety and be concerned about what
happened to their kids.
Having said that, I think that many of us believe that the
preferred weapon for terrorists right now would still be some
sort of conventional explosion. They can kill a lot more people
a lot easier than they can with these exotic chemical and
biological weapons and probably have less chance of blowback or
impact on them. And so that blowing up a school, attacking a
sports event, if you want to have an impact, you probably can
do that a lot easier than you can with trying to use a chemical
or biological agent.
If you're trying to think about how to poison the water of
a major metropolitan area where tens of thousands of people
could be killed or if you're trying to think about how you
would kill over time a large number of people on the East Coast
with some sort of disease, we're really talking about a
sophistication in packaging and delivery and organization that
I think even nation states would have difficulty putting
together.
There's a logistics and organizational requirement that you
can try it, but you'd probably fail if you're not careful. So
that it's the sophistication of the weapon, the sophistication
of the delivery means that while best done by terrorists,
probably is beyond their planning and scientific capability to
put together effective weapons of mass destruction.
One of the states or a group within a state could prepare
that, but not want to be fingered as being the culprit and
could pass it on to a terrorist group. I think at least in my
mind, that's a more likely scenario than al Qaeda's thinking
this up all by itself.
Now, having been one of those who probably would've said
you gotta be crazy if someone came and said I think they might
fly an airplane into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
so part of the problem for us in the intelligence community is
thinking the unthinkable, the things that might occur even if
we don't have much faith that it could.
But I still believe that it's more likely that they would
have to have the aid of some state or some group within a state
to pull off the major weapons of mass destruction sort of
effort successfully.
The Chairman. To put this in context, I asked in the
middle of the anthrax scare and I think it was when our
distinguished doctor colleague was talking to a joint caucus of
Democrats and Republicans, Senator Frist, and I remember asking
the question about not of Dr. Frist, but of some of the
intelligence people about the ability to pollute a water supply
in a city to such a degree that thousands of people would die.
And what I wanted to deal with was the image in my home
state of people thinking someone could take a little vial and
pour a vial into the reservoir near where I live or in the
Brandywine River where we get our drinking water and thousands
of people die. The truth is that is not possible. There is no
such little vial that I'm aware of. You're talking about tons
of material being dropped in some cases, so your point being it
is not all that easy, but we have to anticipate this
possibility occurring.
I'm going to come back in the second round and ask you a
few questions about the intelligence community's assessment of
motivation for these countries. For example, unrelated, assume
Iran were a thoughtful democracy. Were I Iran, I might very
well be doing what Iran was doing because of what Iraq did to
me. It's harder for me to understand why Syria might, but any
rate but I'll come back to that. I yield to the Senator from
North Carolina, Senator Helms.
Senator Helms. Mr. Chairman, there was a time when I
accepted all of these so-called problems as problems that we
ought to be looking at. These are just as important and so
forth. It ain't so.
You think of it in terms of your children and grandchildren
and what they are facing on this kind of problem and then you
have a wake up call. I remember when Sam Nunn and Jim Woolsey
came here that day. That was sort of a wake up call. I don't
know whether you know about that or not, but they had visited
the sites and the laboratories in Russia where all this is
going on.
So Russia's not just fooling around with it. It may not be
that we are just not fooling around with it, too. I don't know,
I confess, the extent to which we are doing it, but we are
headed toward the possibility of something very bad. Now, the
most recent national intelligence estimate indicates, we talk
about Syria and Iran and Russia's assistance to those two
countries, and I just wondered what difference would it make if
Russia were to cease its proliferation, total proliferation,
what impact would this have on the development of chemical and
biological programs in just these two countries?
I think that's the way to put it in perspective. How much
good would it do if they stopped doing it for those two
countries?
Mr. Ford. Well, I think it would make a considerable
difference. I would simply add to your thought that as I was
talking to our friends in Moscow, I think we ought to talk to
our friends in Europe and----
Senator Helms. You mean----
Mr. Ford [continuing].----ask them to do the same thing.
Because I think this is one of those cases where it's not just
Russia and China, ones we sort of look to first for giving
these things to countries in the Middle East, but also in terms
of chemical and biological weapons, often the most critical
pieces of technology or shipment are from our friends in
Europe.
Senator Helms. Let me go back to my original premise. Do
we have any evidence that terrorist organizations have been
able to acquire chemical and biological weapons from Russia?
Now, we've had all sorts of meetings on the fourth floor, Joe,
but I have never heard that question answered to my
satisfaction.
Mr. Ford. You know, I'm not sure that I--I can't really go
into any details, but my sense is that during the Cold War,
during the Soviet Union period, that particularly Russian
chemical defense and biological warfare defense capabilities
were shared with many of their allies and friends.
For most of the countries who have been doing offensive BW
and CW, it starts and is often done under the cover of
defensive activities, chemical warfare, biological warfare. So
I don't know, I can't give you the exact answer that the Soviet
Union did, but they clearly were helpful in providing chemical
and biological weapons information to a whole host of countries
that modeled themselves after the Soviet military forces.
Senator Helms. You have made my point. You have made my
point. Neither do we know. And I've asked the question and they
would get back to me and all that sort of thing. Now, what is
our intelligence estimate of the likely use by Iran of these
dangerous--I'll only just pick out one. What's the likelihood
that they would do it?
Mr. Ford. And the important variable there is the what.
What would they do? I think that Chairman Biden suggested that
one of the reasons that motivates Iran is the concern about
past conflict with Iraq so that some of their chemical and
biological activities are designed as a deterrent or possible
use against Iraq should it attack Iran.
I think there's also the concern on the part of the
Iranians that if there should be a conflict with Israel that
both Israel and the United States would be involved and that
our superior conventional capabilities would need to be
deterred in some way or hope they could deter it in some way so
they would also be motivated to----
Senator Helms. Of course, they got to think of tit for
tat, too. You know, what are they going to do to their own
countries and this is a factor that's almost impossible to
apply. Now, I don't want to leave our friends in Beijing out of
this thing, you know. What's happening there? What are they
doing to proliferate if anything?
Mr. Ford [continuing]. In terms of proliferation, the
record is not clear and particularly we probably could go into
somewhat more detail at a classified level. I think that they
have been more involved in dual use and things that could be
used by a recipient for chemical and biological. I have no
evidence that I know of that they have provided chemical
weapons or biological weapons----
Senator Helms. Nor do I.
Mr. Ford [continuing]. They develop for themselves. That
has something--China hasn't done that.
Senator Helms. Well, we keep mentioning Iraq and we
forget, I think, that there are a hell of a lot of folks over
there who don't like Saddam Hussein and if we or somebody or
everybody should concentrate on getting that guy out of there,
I think Iraq would be once more one of the countries that we
can most rely upon because these folks come to see me and I'm
sure they come to see every Senator and House Member, but they
are pleading for help and it's difficult to know how best to
help them.
Now, Joe mentioned and you did, too, I think, the
biological agents and chemicals that Iraq is trying to acquire.
What type specifically, do you know that, are they trying to
acquire?
Mr. Ford. I would have to take that question and get back
to you. Primarily because any details like that would have been
acquired through collection of intelligence and I'll have to
just take the question if you don't mind.
Senator Helms. Very well. I'd like for you to check your
sources and let us know what you find out. Now, back to cousin
Saddam Hussein, I think he's continuing his ballistic missile
program. We have some indication of that. I will not go further
in describing what the indication is. And I wonder if you have
any feeling about how far if anything he has been able to do to
weaponize these chemo-bio-agents, I suppose you call them, into
warheads and that's the ultimate answer to what the danger
question is all about.
Mr. Ford. Well, both simply by chance and also by
emphasis, we probably know more about Iraq's chemical and
biological weapons programs than many of the other countries
that we're looking at.
Senator Helms. I think that's right.
Mr. Ford. And it's at least in terms of chemical weapons,
not only do we know that they have built them in the past, as I
suggested they had used them in the past, but there are
suspicions based on our inspections and our discussions with
Iraqis over many years that there are a lot of weapons that
they can't account for.
So there is a large consensus that in fact, while I may not
be able to prove it to you today, I certainly believe that they
have a stockpile of chemical weapons weaponized ready to go if
they should need them.
Biological agents are somewhat more problematical, but I
think that most people that look at Iraq on chemical,
biological and nuclear will--if they don't have it now, they're
working on it and that if given lifting of sanctions or some
major change that it makes it a little bit easier for them they
will have them and that the moment that they are no longer
under international controls that they'll have the whole range
of weapons. And we see the activity, we see the emphasis, we
see the resources, we see the brain power----
Senator Helms. All right.
Mr. Ford [continuing].----It's made difficult for them
because we're all watching very closely, but they're still
trying.
Senator Helms. No wonder John Glenn was so smart when he
was in the Senate. One final question yes or no, does the
United States have the ability to detect biological and
chemical weapons being smuggled into the United States?
Mr. Ford. Sir, I don't know, but that's a good question
and I will try to get you an answer.
Senator Helms. Okay. If you'll do that. Thank you, sir.
The Chairman. Senator Lugar.
Senator Lugar. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary
Ford, in your concluding statement of your prepared testimony,
you say, ``I cannot assure you that we can predict and protect
against the threats of CBW attack on the homeland'' and you
point out, that an attack could cause great loss of life.
Isn't the whole thrust of the Administration's new policy
to address these threats and reduce the possibility of such
attacks occurring? By that I mean opening up the countries that
have weapons of mass destruction.
At the heart of the war against terrorism, it seems to me
is the thought that we must gain international transparency
with regard to Iran, Iraq or others or we are going to have
war. We're going to have military force employed. In other
words, the President is saying this is not something you sort
of wait around for for years and maybe it develops, or maybe it
doesn't. This is a critical point in history.
A lot of our allies and members of the coalition in
Afghanistan are very nervous about this. They have the same
estimate you have this morning. We're all vulnerable, but
they're worried the President is serious about eliminating the
intersection of terrorist cells and weapons of mass destruction
and that this policy could lead to a long war.
I suppose what I'm probing for this morning is, is there a
sense and presentation of all this by the Administration so
that the American people understand what's at stake here; or
are we likely to have a lot of hearings about who has what, and
how they got it; or are we going to aggressively remove the
source?
As I understand the quarrel with Iraq, there is no
international transparency with regard to possible WMD
stockpiles. Leaving aside Saddam Hussein and the past there,
the international community shares our concerns. They want to
know what Iraq has in their stockpile.
So, people from Iraq have gone to see Kofi Annan, Secretary
General of the United Nations, offering some arrangement, but
apparently it was unsatisfying to everyone, including the
Secretary General. Eventually, if Iraq says, ``No you cannot
come in, we are going to deny you knowledge of what we are
doing,'' then it's likely to precipitate military action and we
will find out what's occurring.
I think that there has to be some sense, not necessarily in
your testimony, but in the overall discussion of this problem
that we're in a war and the objective is to establish
transparency. And the importance of doing that is tremendously
vital to changing the whole picture.
As you point out, there could be individual terrorists or
groups of people who get their hands on some dangerous material
and kill people. But as you're pointing out, it's very
difficult to poison the whole reservoir or to kill tens of
thousands of people in a city without having a fairly active
organization. If not a state at least some portion of a
government or some apparatus, some infrastructure.
I think we have the ability to stop that if we have the
political will to do so. We will remove the opportunity for
groups to organize and establish themselves.
This is just a personal editorial, but it's precipitated by
the thought, as you've said, this is a gloomy subject and it
is, but it's brighter because we're alert. We're not passive as
we might have been if you had testified a year ago. We're
prepared to do something about it.
We can do something about it in a big way with Russia now.
Here is a country that in terms of chemical warfare is somewhat
cooperative, and 40,000 metric tons of weapons are reasonably
secure in seven locations with Russians and Americans providing
security. And the Russians having a palpable fear of the
results of the stuff getting out, as we do, to Chechens or
others in their own country where Russians would be killed.
But the problem, as you pointed out, is the deadline for
the Chemical Weapons Convention may not be met in 2012, and it
comes down to money. There hasn't been very much in the Russian
budget for this. Now, the current Duma has appropriated some
money, and Congress has stepped forward. So at Shchuchye, there
may be in fact some action this year to start destroying those
weapons.
Although it may be true that nerve gas and other types of
weapons are hard to circulate, I observed in Shchuchye as
perhaps you have that there are 2 million hells being stored
there. I put three 85mm shells in a thin suitcase that somebody
could carry out of the place. Now nobody's going to, we're
guarding it, but these weapons are easily portable.
For a long time it's been hard for some of us to convince
our colleagues that we ought to cooperate with Russia and
destroy these weapons. Some feel that the Russians made their
bed, let them sleep in it. It's expensive to do. Why should
American taxpayers destroy the first one of those shells? But I
think we're over that hurdle. We sort of understand that the
stuff is portable and proliferation could occur.
What is the Administration's general thrust with regard to
this whole problem? It's been an ordeal getting to one of the
seven locations. We know where they all are. We now agree that
95 percent of the problem is in Russia and they have a
reasonably cooperative government, but is there an
organizational thrust or a budget thrust on the part of our
Administration to get to the source? Find out about it, work
with people to destroy it.
Mr. Ford. Senator Lugar, as I know you appreciate,
intelligence officers are very good at telling you that the sky
is falling. We're not so good at telling you how to protect
yourself from that or what you need to do. And it may seem like
a cop out, but in fact it really is a different job and I will
tell my colleagues at State that they should come down and
brief the committee or see you personally and talk to you about
what we intend to do about this.
What we are telling our policy colleagues is that this is
one you can't go to sleep on. That everything that we see is
that a proliferation of these very dangerous capabilities of
chemical and biological weapons both by states and by terrorist
groups and that given that proliferation, the chances for use
are increasing and that if they are used, we'll never forgive
ourselves if we don't do something about it.
I have to tell you that I still am more worried by a
nuclear attack than I am a chemical or biological attack. I
think that terrorist use of these weapons can occur, and I
would mourn the death of even a few people; but I would also
hate to wake up one morning and realize that instead of just
the World Trade Center disappearing that New York City had
disappeared or Washington or some other place and that either
by an accidental launch or by some five crazy guys that get a
hold of an ICBM from one of the nations that have them and
shoot it at us.
But that's not say that biological and chemical aren't
dangerous. They are. And they're very difficult to deal with.
Senator Lugar. Let me just to say in the limited time I
have that I think nuclear probably is a greater threat, but
since we're concentrating today----
Mr. Ford. I understand. I understand.
Senator Lugar [continuing].----on chemical and biological.
With the biological, we have a very talented man working for
Nunn-Lugar in the Pentagon now, Andy Webber. His exploits have
been told by Judy Miller in her book, ``Germs.'' He has visited
many biological facilities and made it possible for people like
me to get into them.
I mention this because the sharing of information about
what we have found has not been very wide. I point out
anecdotally as I visited with British Intelligence on the way
back from NATO in January, they were amazed that we physically
had been wandering around biological facilities, examining the
contents, trying to put some security beyond barbed wire around
some of these places.
I think you know with our NATO allies, with our European
friends, there's potential for a great deal of cooperation, as
we simply clue them in as to what we know with regard to
chemical situations, too. The degree of intelligence
perspective in all these things is very uneven and I think we
have the benefit of being far ahead in that respect due to the
intrusions, but the----
Mr. Ford. But I think some our NATO and European friends
are in fact helping very much with Russia----
Senator Lugar. Right.
Mr. Ford [continuing].----in destruction and control of the
chemical weapons.
Senator Lugar. They have indeed; and the Germans and the
Norwegians, the Canadians, the British all have stepped up now
to the Shchuchye project, probably because of your efforts and
those at State. I applaud you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Frist.
Senator Frist. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you,
Secretary Ford for an outstanding perspective to what I think
is one of the most pressing issues of our time. And that is the
threat of biological, and chemical, but biological terror, in
part because unlike the nuclear, we don't fully understand
biological terror.
We saw the assault of anthrax on our soil and we were
unprepared. We were unprepared for that. This hearing is very
important because it shows the rich matrix involved that is our
international intelligence which really hasn't done a very good
job in speaking, I believe, to our public health system. There
hasn't been the need to in part because the science hadn't been
there. We weren't fully aware that the technology of
weaponization is in the hands of others and it is this far
developed as it is.
And I applaud the Chairman and the Ranking Member to paint
this much larger picture and then it's incumbent upon us in the
United States at Congress with the leadership of the
Administration to weave this story together in such a way that
families listening to this testimony around this country feel
secure and feel safe and know what to do.
One area we haven't talked very much about I'd like to come
back to after I make a few more general statements is the whole
issue of smallpox because I don't want us to leave this hearing
and think that it does take a large state or a lot of money or
a lot of sophistication. Because it doesn't and that's what's
unique.
In terms of biological weapons, these germs, these
bacteria, you don't see the weapon. It doesn't take very much
money. They spread themselves. They can be contagious, not all
of them are. The perpetrator is long gone. The weapon, you
can't smell it, you can't see it, you can't touch it, you can't
taste it and the victim may be six or seven days later, plus
that victim can spread the germ to other victims.
As a nation, I don't think Americans are fully aware of the
risk. In your written statement, ``Terrorist interest in
chemical and biological weapons has been growing and probably
will increase in the near term. The threat is real and
proven.'' You said it in your oral testimony as well, but it's
very important that we in Congress hear that and I would say
that local elected officials and local governments hear that as
well because they're the ones who are going to respond.
It's not going to likely be the military where
conventionally we think in response to these terrorist
assaults. America's not yet aware of how real the threat is,
even in spite of anthrax which hit here in Washington, the East
Coast and Florida and New York and Connecticut.
Your statement that it's increasing or that the threat is
real and proven and probably will increase is important for
America to hear as well. We haven't seen it yet. I don't know
what's going to come, but a terrorist whose purpose is to
terrorize, to put fear, to paralyze infrastructure now know
that it works. Before anthrax we didn't know. Now they know it
works even though anthrax in the large scope of things was
quite small. I say that because I think the risk is real, that
it's increasing, that we remain vulnerable today.
We're responding as a government, but we still remain
underprepared. The intentional release of potentially deadly
bacteria and viruses or poisonous agents or chemical agents
that we're talking about is a reality today. Ounce for ounce,
whether it's anthrax or whether it is smallpox, these are among
the most lethal weapons of mass destruction. They're more
powerful than the hydrogen bomb today potentially, that can be
used and if you're a terrorist and you know that, it gives you
great strength if your purpose indeed is to terrorize.
There have been many past studies that we kind of put aside
that we use as a call to action, but I think we need to go back
and look at those. In 1993, the Office of Technology and
Assessment estimated that under the right atmospheric
conditions, dispersion by an airplane of 220 pounds of anthrax
spores over Washington, D.C. could result in up to 3 million
deaths.
Well, we're much better prepared today I believe with the
way government has responded, with the stockpiles of medicines,
but what about smallpox. We didn't go into the agents today,
Mr. Chairman, but what about botulinum toxin? We will in the
second panel. Or tularemia or the plaque which has wiped a
larger percentage of the population than any disease. These
agents have been identified by our intelligence community and
now we need to communicate with America to make sure that we do
appropriately respond.
As we've heard and will continue to hear, the threats from
biological agents are real. The terrorist groups have the
resources. They have the motivation now we know to use germ
warfare and indeed, we need to recognize as a country as we
merge our foreign relations, our intelligence, our foreign
policy with what goes on here at home, the weapons of choice in
the wars of the 21st century may well be botulinum toxin,
anthrax and smallpox.
You mentioned al Qaeda. Osama bin Ladin has said publicly
that it is his religious duty to acquire weapons of mass
destruction including biological and chemical weapons. I
appreciate you going far in saying what evidence we have to
date, but in truth as you well said and even implied, there may
be more than we know today and we're aggressively looking in
that arena.
People say why today and in part it's because of these
rapid advances in agent delivery. We know that other nations
have loaded warheads, Scud missiles with biological weapons, or
you know that and we on the panel, but a lot of America doesn't
know that. It's all ready been done. They've been loaded. They
haven't been fire, haven't been sent, but that's how far along.
Technology's advanced even since that point in time in
terms of how to deliver these agents. Mr. Chairman and Senator
Helms, I think are doing a tremendous job and I look forward to
working with them on their bill, the Global Pathogen
Surveillance Act of this year. It's a bill I've studied that is
very, very important as we look at both emerging potential
agents as well as agents that we know of today.
This whole issue about are we prepared as a nation is
important. Again, that's why today's hearing is so important
because physicians are not trained to recognize these agents.
Physicians are not trained to look and see what smallpox is.
The anthrax rash, we've simply not been trained to look at that
in the past.
Every moment counts here because how quickly we pick up and
diagnose pretty much defines how quickly we can stop the
spread. Therefore, I think it is very important that you brief
us either privately or otherwise what are the seven agents? How
real is that risk of smallpox? And I'll come back and close
with a question on this, but smallpox, it takes one person and
if that person's infected and they go to an airport, they can
infect 10 people and those 10 people can be all across the
United States of America.
So it really does go tracing it all the way back. We don't
have enough vaccine today. Period. Now, I said we don't have
enough vaccine to vaccinate everybody today. We do have enough
vaccine I think to respond appropriately, but we're not going
to have what we're going to have in a year from now. So in the
meantime, it's important for us to know who has the smallpox
virus. It's been eradicated as a disease, but who has that
virus?
And I'll close with that question for you and I know you
probably can't answer that fully right now, but it is important
for us to know.
Let me just say because now I've sort of painted this
picture that I'm concerned about that we are responding as a
government. It's been remarkable to me since October. We passed
a Bio-terrorism Preparedness Act of 2001 that the Senate
passed. It sets a comprehensive framework for responsiveness.
The President and the Congress has responded by increasing
funding to about $3 billion from about $500 million in one
year. That money's down to the local level. In the President's
budget, it will be going up to about $6 billion if we approve
that aspect of his budget, which I'm very supportive of as we
go forward.
With that and I'll ask that my opening statement be made a
part of the record in its entirety.
The Chairman. Without objection it will be.
[The prepared statement of Senator Frist follows.]
Prepared Statement of Senator Bill Frist
We are here to address one of the most pressing issues of our
time--the threat of chemical and biological terror. America is not
aware that the risk is real and significant. We are vulnerable. We are
not unprepared, but we are underprepared.
Biological and chemical terrorism, the intentional release of
potentially deadly bacteria, viruses, toxins, or poisonous chemical
agents, are a terrifying reality. Ounce for ounce, biological agents
such as anthrax and smallpox are among the most lethal weapons of mass
destruction known. In 1993, the Office of Technology Assessment
estimated that under the right atmospheric conditions, dispersion by
airplane of 220 pounds of anthrax spores over Washington, D.C. could
result in up to 3 million deaths. And as we know all too well, the
mailing of anthrax-laced letters last fall infected 18 people and
killed five innocent Americans.
As we will hear today, the threats from biological and chemical
agents are real. Terrorist groups have the resources and the motivation
to use germ warfare. The weapons of choice in the first war of the 21st
century may be tularemia, smallpox, ebola, botulin toxin, and anthrax.
But this should come as no surprise. Osama bin Laden has said publicly
that it is his religious duty to acquire weapons of mass destruction,
including biological and chemical weapons. Rapid advances in agent
delivery technology have made the weaponization of germs much easier.
Finally, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the expertise of thousands
of scientists knowledgeable in germ warfare may be available to the
highest bidder.
Bioterrorism remains a significant threat to our country. Exposed
individuals will most likely show up in emergency rooms, physician
offices, or clinics, with nondescript symptoms or ones mimicking the
common cold or flu. Most likely, physicians and other health care
providers will not attribute these symptoms to a bioweapon. If the
bioagent is communicable, such as small pox, many more people may be
infected in the interim, including our health care workers. Experts say
it may take as long as 24 to 48 hours after a bioterrorist attack
occurs before federal assistance can arrive, making it the critical
time for preventing mass casualties.
Unfortunately, as we also will hear today, America is not yet fully
prepared to meet the threat of biological warfare. Great strides have
been made in the past three years; but there is much more to be done.
It is a frightening but true fact that a biological or chemical
attack on our soil could be even more deadly and destructive than the
recent attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Biological
weapons, in particular, pose considerable challenges which are
different from those of standard terrorist weapons. The delayed onset
of symptoms, difficulty in tracking the source of an attack and high
communicability are among the factors that make bioterrorism a real and
serious threat. A terrorist attack using a deadly infectious agent--
whether delivered through the air, through our foods, or by other
means--could kill or sicken millions of Americans.
To counter this threat, a substantial new federal investment in our
public health infrastructure, increased intelligence and preventive
measures, expedited development and production of vaccines and
treatments, and constant vigilance on the part of our nation's health
care workers is required.
Recently, legislation I introduced, with Senator Kennedy, to help
prepare to meet this threat was signed into law. The ``Public Health
Threats and Emergencies Act of 2000'' provides a coherent framework for
responding to health threats resulting from bioterrorism. It authorizes
a series of important initiatives to strengthen the nation's public
health system, improve hospital response capabilities, upgrade the
Center for Disease Control and Prevention's rapid identification and
early warning systems, assure adequate staffing and training of health
professionals to diagnose and care for victims of bioterrorism, enhance
our research and development capabilities, and authorizes additional
measures necessary to prevent, prepare, and respond to the threat of
biological or chemical attacks.
The Frist-Kennedy ``Bioterrorism Preparedness Act of 2001'' builds
on the foundation laid by the ``Public Health Threats and Emergencies
Act of 2000'' by authorizing additional measures to improve our health
system's capacity to respond to bioterrorism, protect the nation's food
supply, speed the development and production of vaccines and other
countermeasures, enhance coordination of federal activities on
bioterrorism, and increase our investment in fighting bioterrorism at
the local, state, and national levels.
The Congress and the Administration has now provided an additional
$1.4 billion for these activities; the vast majority of these funds
would go toward a one-time investment in strengthening the response
capabilities of our hospitals, health care professionals, and local
public health agencies that would form the front-line response team in
the aftermath of a bioweapon attack.
Arms control negotiators have used the term ``dual use'' to refer
to biologic production facilities that have the potential to be used by
some countries to produce vaccines for children one week and then
produce bacteria or viruses for biologic weapons the next. But we can
also use the term ``dual use'' differently: The same infrastructure
investments used to prepare our public health communities, doctors and
federal agencies to detect, diagnose and respond to smallpox epidemic
resulting from a biologic attack can also be used to detect and respond
to outbreaks of natural occurring diseases like West Nile.
In addition to strengthening our defenses against a bioterrorist
event, the improved public health capacities resulting from preparation
and planning will lead to substantial health benefits in dealing with
inevitable natural occurrence of emerging infectious diseases.
Last fall, the GAO released a report, ``Challenges in Improving
Infectious Disease Surveillance Systems,'' requested by Senators Leahy,
McConnell, Feingold, and myself. It concludes that global disease
surveillance, especially in developing countries, is woefully
inadequate to provide advance warning about newly emerged diseases,
including antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis, or the suspected use or
testing of dangerous organisms as bioweapons. Not only would improving
international surveillance networks and capacities help poor countries
meet their health care needs, it is in our own security interest to
know about emerging threats if we are to appropriately respond quickly
and effectively.
It is essential that we take steps immediately to fill the gaps in
our nation's defense and surveillance system against chemical and
biological terrorism, as well as our public health infrastructure. It
is essential that Congress to take the steps necessary to make sure
that our nation is fully prepared to respond to any threat to our
people. I look forward to working with my colleagues to meet these
goals.
Senator Frist. Secretary Ford, again I thank you for your
overall presentation. On smallpox itself, is it an agent that
we should be worried about today in terms of international
terrorism including terrorism on our soil here?
Mr. Ford. The very simple answer, Senator, is yes, very
much so. The work that you and others in the Congress have
done--at least from an intelligence officer's perspective--has
not only been important, but better late than never. This
threat has been growing for some time and we can't warn you
enough that the threat is real and that it's going to come and
that we're going to need to be prepared.
At least from the intelligence community, we're trying to
warn you also that we can't see all of this. We're not going to
be able, unless we're lucky, to give you the sort of specific
tactical warning that you need. That should suggest to most
people that we have to get ready.
Now, I don't know any intelligence officers who aren't of a
very--their view is that we should defend as much as we can;
public health, homeland defense, increase the protections at
the borders, et cetera. But most of us believe that we can't
rest just on defense, that we have to be aggressively going out
and with all of our diplomatic and economic--and military, if
necessary--means deal with the problems of terrorism and those
countries that are supporting terrorism and weapons of mass
destruction.
And that it's this combination of preparedness at home,
being smarter, the public understanding what the dangers are,
the realistic dangers and understanding the exaggerations that
have been made in some cases. But also we need to know that
we're going to have to go get people. We're going to have to
continue to arrest terrorists. We're going to continue to have
to push diplomatic measures to try to get a handle on this.
But it's not one we can just ignore any longer. We can't
just walk away from it. This is one that if we are faithful to
our children and our grandchildren, this is one we're going to
work on from now on. And unfortunately there's no easy answer.
There's no simple answer. Just simply the interest that you and
the others on the committee have added an important step in the
right direction.
Senator Frist. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
The Chairman. Let me follow-up with just a few questions
and I invite any of my colleagues to either interrupt me and or
add their own questions and I'll be brief.
As usual, Senator Lugar stated it most succinctly,
transparency or war. And I think that's really the choice that
we're going to have to make and the decisions that others are
going to have to take in terms of whether we mean it. With
regard to transparency, has the intelligence community done an
assessment as to what kind of inspection regime would be needed
in Iraq to satisfy us that there was transparency?
Mr. Ford. There is not a formal intelligence community
assessment of that. I'm sure that various intelligence agencies
have thought about this and written things. We in fact in INR
have just completed in the last week our own assessment of what
would be needed in an inspection regime, but we did it almost
as a target to shoot at rather than a policy prescription. It
was, if you're going to ask us to monitor and verify, here is
what we need from an intelligence perspective. And we'd be
happy to--it's classified of course, but we'd be happy to share
that with the committee.
The Chairman. After consultation with the Ranking Member,
what I'm going to hope we can suggest and I'm sure we can, with
plenty of advanced notice to our colleagues, a couple, a series
of closed hearings----
Senator Helms. Amen.
The Chairman [continuing].----on matters that we raised
with regard to the nuclear concern two weeks ago, a week ago as
well as this. But in open session, one of the things that seems
to me, as you just said Carl in response to Dr. Frist, or to
Senator Frist, you said that this is something we're going to
be trying to get our hands around, this is something we're
dealing with on a daily basis if we're serious for a long time
to come.
One of the difficulties that I'm having here is it seems to
me, at least on it's surface, there are certain things that we
are able to do with a fair degree of reliability and there are
certain things that we can do where we can measure, we can
measure the results even though we can't guarantee that after a
full accounting, we've taken care of everything.
And I keep coming back to a place my friend from Indiana
has spent a lot of time thinking about in Russia, keep coming
back to Russia. There's certain obvious, clear, able to be
delineated concerns that unlike with regard to Iraq, unlike
Iran, North Korea, Libya or any other place, there is at least
in part a willingness to genuinely cooperate, genuinely
cooperate.
And so I'd like ask a few very just very pointed questions
that you may be able to give very short answers to. If you
can't, I can defer it to a closed session.
What is the INR's assessment of A, the willingness and B,
the capacity with our financial and professional assistance of
the Russians to corral and destroy some of the 40,000 tons of
their chemical weapons that they have?
My impression is they mean it. My impression is they
desperately need help. My impression is notwithstanding the
fact we talked about them participating, their entire defense
budget is about $5 billion this year. I mean, I wish Americans
would think about that.
Let's assume they're lying by a factor of 10. Let's assume
they're lying by a factor of 20. They're still one-third to
one-quarter with gigantic lies what our defense budget is. But
if our estimates are correct that it's about $5 billion, then I
don't think it's at all realistic that they're going to be able
to ``chip in.'' And why is it not in our interest I keep asking
myself, for us to spend 8 to $10 billion to wipe out a
significant portion of the chemical capability that exists
there?
So my question is again, have you assessed their
willingness to genuinely cooperate in that effort and B, do we
have the combined capacity to destroy a significant portion of
this chemical stockpile if we're willing to spend the money?
Mr. Ford. My assessment is similar to yours that the
Russians clearly would like to be rid of this problem and that
they are willing to cooperate in destroying these chemical
weapons capabilities. Partially for the same reasons that we
have of the fear of--you have so many of these. As Senator
Lugar pointed out, they're afraid that they're going to lose
some of them, somebody's going to steal them, somebody's going
to sell them and so that they'd like to have them off their
hands. They also are clearly understanding that many of these
weapons are deteriorating and that they are a costly logistic
problem in the future for them. Forget all the good things that
would happen if they got rid of the weapons. And the best that
we can tell is that the real issue--well, there are always some
on any side that are suspicious of the U.S. or should we really
do this, but clearly the Russian government is prepared to take
this step, but they can't afford it. It's too expensive and----
The Chairman. It's much more than that.
Mr. Ford [continuing].----they're going to have to get
some help from us or the international community or they're not
going to be able to do it certainly on the time schedule that
we'd like to see them do it.
The Chairman. There's much more to pursue about that and
I'll do some of that in writing. Let me conclude by asking what
is INR's assessment of the allegations some of the Russian
entities that still are engaged in, that existed for biological
research and development, if not the military, are conducting
active biological weapons programs in contravention of the
Biological Weapons Convention and why have the Russians in
INR's view refused U.S. requests for access to four military
institutes working on biological research activities? If you
have an assessment.
Mr. Ford. I do and I don't. I do in the sense that I could
talk to you about this in a little more detail at a classified
level. My unclassified answer is that I think that biological
weapons research is a serious and embarrassing subject for a
lot of people and that even if they have changed their mind
about the use of biological weapons and would like to be rid of
them as we would, they probably have fibbed to us a little bit
or fibbed to some people about it and they don't want us to
find out the extent of their program.
And I think it has more to do with embarrassment of what
they had up their sleeve and what they were doing rather than a
desire to keep a capability back and use it against the Unites
States at some point in the future.
The Chairman. I thank you for the answer. For what it's
worth, I agree with your assessment, because I think about how
reluctant we are about any intention or desire or plan now or
in the future to ever use biological weapons. The American
public would be in this day and age in 2002, shocked and
abhorred by knowing what we considered trying to develop in
1950 in '60 in '70 and so--but any rate, I thank you very much.
We look forward to you in a closed hearing, but I yield to
Senator Helms or any of my colleagues.
Senator Helms. I'll be very brief. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman. This question was obviously handed to me by the lady
behind me and it's important. Let me go back a little bit. The
first President Bush called me one day and said I want to go to
one of your universities involved in a very interesting study.
Have you got such a university? I said what city you want to go
to? I said in Raleigh we have North Carolina State University
and it's great and he said, let's go there.
So we went there to the university where they were learning
all about a number of things that we are talking about, Mr.
Chairman, and I looked around at whom we were supposed to see
and all but one of the students, and they were the top
students, were not Americans. They were Chinese. I had a
Russian and so forth and so on.
So the question that Miss Patty passed to me, is there any
available evidence to indicate that foreign nationals are
coming to American universities, earning degrees in biology or
chemical engineering and taking this knowledge back to their
home countries to use against us? And the answer to that I
believe is of course.
And I haven't even thought about what we should do about it
or what we could do about it, but we're training a lot of these
people to go back and do the things to us that we don't want to
do to them and we don't want them to do to us. So give that
some thought and let's talk about it one day.
Mr. Ford. Yes, sir.
Senator Helms. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Lugar?
Senator Lugar. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just
join Senator Helms in this colloquy. Same problem persists at
Purdue University where there are almost 5,000 people involved
in engineering chemistry. The scientific situation's sort of an
equivalent to North Carolina State in Indiana.
I visited with the president of Purdue about this at great
length because it's a tradeoff. It's very tough. On the one
hand, a case could be made that these students by studying in
America, learning about us, about our ways of doing business as
well as the integrity, carry these values back to their
countries. If they head back; many don't. They stay in the
United States, but a good many do head back. Leadership that in
terms of our public diplomacy is very important.
We constantly worry about the educational system, about al
Qaeda people getting particular religious training without any
grounding at least in things that we believe are fundamentally
important here. And so the question is if we were to exclude
all of these people, sort of cancel the visas of 5,000 people
and say we're going to keep it to ourselves, we could.
But on the other hand, the benefits that come from having
tens of thousands of these students in our country, I suppose
it becomes a problem for you at State, with regard to
immigration service, others quite apart from the FBI and
counterintelligence to work this problem. So we have the
benefits really of people understanding America and hopefully
cut the liabilities of persons who have bad designs.
Mr. Ford. I would agree that the loss of the opportunity
to go to the University of North Carolina or Duke or North
Carolina State or other universities, North Carolina or Indiana
or Purdue would be their loss. But my sense is that even if we
tried to keep people away, which I think is totally
undemocratic and against whatever our whole country stands for,
but even if we did, this information is too portable that they
might not get the best that they would if they went to North
Carolina and to Indiana, but they get enough by staying at home
from other sources.
Senator Lugar. And long range learning on the Internet
perhaps.
Mr. Ford. That's right. And I've always, you know, I may
be naive, but I think that if they come here to the United
States and study that they not only will learn science, but
they'll also learn a little bit about our democracy and our
freedom and maybe carry that back with them to wherever they're
from.
So obviously there's a risk there, but I've always felt
like the risk was that to close down our society and go against
our instincts here for freedom and education for everybody.
Senator Lugar. Just one more follow-up. Now, looking at it
the other way, a long time ago when Vice President Gore was
meeting with Russian Prime Minister the Chernomyrdin, I
suggested that one potential solution for the chemical and
biological problem in Russia was for American firms to buy the
facilities. Literally, the scientists want to be employed.
There is a tremendous amount of communication back and forth
all the time. I still think that's a good idea.
Investors face alot of problems, including the legal system
of Russia, lack of protection for stockholder rights, all that
is nightmare for American firms. But if there is to be some
degree of constructive movement in these areas it would come,
it seems, through international cooperation with American
management working with Russian scientists. We will need to
clean up a lot of old facilities which should be torn down,
safely store and secure bad stuff that should be terminated and
this is a time in which the Russians might be receptive to this
kind of cooperation.
So I don't ask you for a comment, but please carry back to
State at least some impetus that this might be useful.
The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Frist.
Senator Frist. Just one minute. First of all, thank you
very much for again an outstanding presentation. This whole
last colloquy on science and the exchange of intellectual
capital I think does mean that our intelligence community needs
to really focus a lot on science peer review, having our
scientists sensitized to what the relative risks are to a
nation and what you pick up as targeting.
That's in some ways tough for our scientists because
they've never been brought into the room. And the same way
we're bringing the CIA and the FBI into the room with public
health officials for the first time looking at homeland
security. First time if you have somebody from law enforcement
sitting right next to a doctor sitting right next to
epidemiologist, first time.
But that's what it's going to take and because science is
going to continue to progress, we may have smallpox--we may be
getting a good vaccine to smallpox, but with some genetic
engineering and the science is there today, the smart terrorist
can simply re-engineer an anthrax, botulinum toxin, plague,
tularemia. They will be able to in the next few years and
therefore this ongoing integration, openness, transparency,
peer review of our scientific community with intelligence, I
believe, is going to be critical.
The Chairman. Thank you very much. Carl, thanks again and
within the next between now and probably just after the recess,
I'm going to be asking for your help, the committee will, in
closed session.
Mr. Ford. And I will bring some of my experts with me who
actually know the answers to some of these questions.
The Chairman. You've done very well and you've framed this
in a way that we have to be able to begin to get a handle on it
and I thank you very, very much for your time.
Mr. Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
The Chairman. Now we'll hear from a very distinguished
panel. Michael Moodie, President of the Chemical and Biological
Arms Control Institute; Dr. Amy Sands, Deputy Director of
Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey; and Dr. Alan
P. Zelicoff, Senior Scientist, Sandia National Laboratory,
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
We thank you all very, very much for your patience and for
being here. This is to us a very, very important hearing. Maybe
we can begin with your statements in the order in which you
were called. Dr. Moodie, you first and if you wish to, I'm not
suggesting you have to, if you summarize your statement, be
sure the entire statement be placed on the record. This is
important so you take the time you need to make the statement.
You've come a long way to help us. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL MOODIE, PRESIDENT, CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL
ARMS CONTROL INSTITUTE
Mr. Moodie. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's an
honor to appear before the committee once again. I've got a
rather long statement so I'll just take a few minutes to
summarize it and appreciate----
The Chairman. Don't short circuit. This is important, so
take your time.
Mr. Moodie [continuing]. Yes, sir, but I'll hit the high
points.
The Chairman. Okay.
Mr. Moodie. Mr. Chairman, Members of the committee, for
the last decade and especially since September 11th, Americans
have been on a steep learning curve about chemical and
biological weapons.
In the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein confronted us with a
chemically and biologically armed opponent. Aum Shinrikyo's
sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway was a wake up call that
showed our country's vulnerability to a kind of terrorism that
could include unconventional weapons that produce high
casualties. And the recent anthrax mailings and hoaxes have
forced us all to learn more about biological weapons than most
people ever wanted to know.
Among the mix of tools on which we must draw to deal with
these challenges is arms control. This is not to argue that
arms control must have pride of place among those tools. Indeed
it may be that arms control is not the most important policy
arena for dealing with chemical and biological weapons
proliferation by states or their potential acquisition by
terrorists. But arms control can make a contribution and it
should not be eliminated from the policy toolbox.
In my statement, I consider some of the factors that are
creating a more complex environment, driving the need for new
approaches for dealing with the CBW challenge and redefining
arms control's role in helping to meet that challenge. In my
oral remarks this morning, I'd like to focus on meeting the
challenges that will confront us as we attempt to move forward.
First, with respect to chemical weapons. The first
challenge, as the last speaker said and as many Members of the
committee have emphasized, is eliminating those chemical
weapons that already exist. Although the destruction process in
the United States is proceeding reasonably well, as has already
been pointed out, its counterpart in Russia is far behind
schedule. It is my view that it is doubtful in the extreme that
Russia will meet the timetable specified in the Chemical
Weapons Convention even if it is granted the one-time five year
extension allowed by the treaty.
This predicament is first and foremost a problem for the
Russians themselves. Moscow is clearly committed to making
progress, but its financial commitments will not be sufficient
to meet its treaty obligations. Ways must be found to promote a
greater commitment from Russia itself. But those countries that
have an interest in the destruction of the Russian CW
stockpile, which is in essence every state party to the CWC,
should also provide more assistance. Not only the United
States, but in particular in my view, the Europeans and
Japanese should do more.
The upcoming CWC review conference scheduled for next year
should provide an opportunity for developing a support strategy
to meet this goal, which in my view represents the single most
important objective of the CWC.
Another issue that must be addressed relates to challenge
inspections under the convention.
In many ways the challenge inspection provision is the
single most important tool in the entire treaty. But to date,
that provision has never been invoked, although suspicions have
been raised that some state's parties are in substantive
violation of their commitments. The United States, for example,
has claimed publicly for many years--both the Clinton and Bush
Administrations--that Iran continues to violate the treaty, yet
Washington has never followed up these allegations by
requesting a challenge inspection in Iran.
In my view, the longer such provisions are not used, the
more difficult it will become to use them in the future. And as
a result, the international community could lose a critical
tool for promoting the fundamental goals of chemical
disarmament.
A third important issue that must be addressed is the
adaptability of the convention to advances in chemical science
and technology. Certain areas of chemistry and biology relevant
to the CWC are changing rapidly and will continue to do so. In
the area of toxins for example, advanced bio-technology can
create novel toxins that have scientific or medical
applications but that can also be misused as weapons.
A consideration should be given therefore to an ongoing
process that provides updated information on critical
scientific and technological developments to states parties of
the convention on a sustained basis.
A further area of effort should focus on issues of
cooperation and assistance. During the first five years of the
implementation of the CWC, states parties and the Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have attempted to view
assistance issues as secondary to operational matters such as
declarations and inspections. But the issue of international
cooperation is important in light of the ongoing debate over
the future of chemical export controls and of the Australia
Group in particular.
As science and technology continues to advance and global
technology diffusion proceeds, the question of the viability of
our export control arrangements will become increasingly
difficult to manage.
The final area which chemical arms control must address
relates to the institutional context within which those arms
control efforts proceed, particularly straightening out the
problems of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons.
First, as the Chairman has all ready indicated, for some
time the OPCW has been plagued with financial and staff
problems that must be fixed. In some cases, the solutions rest
in states parties fulfilling their obligations in a timely
manner. But some of the budget problems are structural and will
require the Organization to define new ways of doing business
to set the situation right.
Second, many states parties cover activities at the
organization with a junior diplomat from their bilateral
embassy to the Netherlands. This generally low level of
representation at the OPCW complicates and hampers the work of
the Organization and makes it less efficient and effective.
Finally, questions of institutional leadership have arisen.
It is clear that the OPCW leadership has lost the confidence of
some of the key CWC states parties. Such a situation cannot be
allowed to continue for very long as it creates an environment
that is severely detrimental to staff morale and effective
action.
If the OPCW is not lead in a manner that generates
confidence among those countries whose support is critical,
treaty implementation will suffer. The focus of attention will
be on internal issues rather than on getting the job done--and
the job is critical and should come first. Therefore a means
for resolving the current dispute about leadership must be
found.
Turning to the biological weapons challenge, five issues in
particular must be addressed. The first question must be the
goals of the next steps in arms controls. Two sets of possible
objectives for steps suggest themselves. One set relates more
to traditional arms control goals including verification,
confidence building, increasing transparency or enhancing
consultations. Of these, effective verification of the BWC is
not possible and each of the other objectives has conceptual
and practical political problems associated with them. And in
my view none of them appears to be sufficiently robust to
energize the currently stagnant process.
An alternative approach is to go beyond traditional arms
control goals to define the aims altogether differently. In
light of the complex environment with which biological arms
control must deal, as well as the clear lack of success of
traditional approaches, the need for new thinking is clear. In
particular--and this may be my most important point today--the
effort must be made to create a new conceptual and policy
environment within which the current BW challenges can be
addressed. Such a new environment would need a move away from
business as usual by all of the critical stakeholders including
governments, industry, the scientific community, the health
community and many others.
New partnerships among these key constituencies must be
developed. New means must be identified to address the speed of
scientific and technological change. This raises questions
about the value of and potential for governance or self-
governance of the international biological, scientific and
technological communities.
Second, U.S. officials have stressed that too little
attention has been paid to questions of noncompliance. Given
this clear U.S. priority, any next steps must address two core
concerns from Washington's perspective. First, how do BWC
states parties meet the essential but often ignored
responsibility of dealing with countries who are party to the
treaty, but are either cheating or suspected of doing so.
Second, how do they deal with those countries who are not
states parties and therefore not breaking any commitments, but
are clearly violating a widely held global norm?
These are not questions that members of the international
community necessarily are comfortable addressing. They would
prefer to assume that states that join a convention comply with
their obligations. The reality, however, is that states cheat
and something must be done about them.
Third, part of the reason that the BWC protocol
negotiations did not focus on core proliferation concerns is
that the drafters bent over backwards to meet the political
requirements of some participants that any multilateral
agreement treat all states parties the same. This political
objective has been a hallmark of non-aligned nations' positions
in arms control negotiations since the nuclear nonproliferation
treaty created nuclear haves and have nots.
This nondiscrimination may be politically essential, but it
does not necessarily create good arms control in a situation in
which participants are not equal in terms of their interests,
assets or obligations. If progress is to be made, somehow these
imperatives have to be reconciled.
Fourth, cooperation and assistance in the life sciences for
peaceful purposes is a political imperative of non-aligned
countries that they insist must be included in any
nonproliferation agreement. Some BWC states parties have made
no secret of the fact that they joined the treaty not because
of their concerns over biological weapons, but in order to
secure access to critical science and technology.
Conventional wisdom holds that no multilateral progress
will be made on harder-edged nonproliferation measures without
something on cooperation and assistance. If this is the case,
any next steps must find a way to reconcile these strongly held
interests. The conventional wisdom should also be challenged
and consideration of next steps should also explore whether
potential hard arms control and cooperation and assistance
measures might be addressed on separate tracks.
Finally, following the failure of the Ad Hoc Group
negotiations and the suspended review conference, some
participants might want to abandon arms control altogether and
rely on other measures to fight BW proliferation and biological
terrorism. Even if arms control is included in the toolkit for
promoting nonproliferation and counterterrorism, the priority
it assumes in relation to other available tools will be a
critical factor in assessing how assertively and successfully
one might promote next steps in arms control.
In fact, differences have all ready emerged between the
United States and other countries including friends and allies
over these relative priorities. The United States tends to
assess the value of arms control and the contribution of
instruments such as the BWC in terms that relate them to other
tools in the toolkit including intelligence, diplomacy, passive
and active defenses, military options and export controls. Arms
control is appreciated for its contributions, but its
limitations are also recognized and maximizing its potential is
seen to derive from making it work together effectively with
these other policy tools.
In contrast, and to overstate for emphasis, some Europeans
for example, tend to give pride of place in the toolkit to arms
control. Some even view arms control as an alternative to these
other policy tools rather than as a complement to them. The
result is that some friends and allies of the United States
rely more heavily on the contribution of arms control in
dealing with the problems of proliferation than does
Washington. Such differences must be explored in an assessment
of the potential utility and effectiveness of any next steps in
BW arms control.
Mr. Chairman, in my statement I have concluded with a
number of specific suggestions that I think might help meet
these requirements. I would be happy to go into those in more
detail during the question period. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Moodie follows:]
Prepared Statement of Michael Moodie
reducing the chemical and biological weapons threat:
what contribution from arms control?
On July 25, 2001 the United States announced that it would not
support the draft protocol negotiated by the Ad Hoc Group (AHG) of
states parties to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) as presented
in the ``composite text'' offered by the AHG Chairman. The U.S.
statement made clear that further negotiation of specific language in
the draft would not address the major problems the United States had
with the proposed protocol, which was seen as based on a fundamentally
flawed conceptual approach and unwarranted assumptions.
Five months later, the Fifth BWC Review Conference suspended its
efforts without completing a Final Declaration in light of a demand by
the United States that the Ad Hoc Group process be brought to an end.
This last-minute standoff was the culmination of three weeks of
disputes over how best to strengthen the BWC and to carry forward the
fight against biological weapons (BW) proliferation.
Between these two events, the United States was the victim of
unprecedented anthrax attacks in the wake of the September 11
destruction of the World Trade Center. The anthrax attacks transformed
what had been a theoretical concern for some people into a very real
security threat for the entire country.
While much of our recent attention has focused on biological
weapons, concern about chemical weapons should be no less intense. We
have seen chemical weapons used--both by states and by terrorists.
Saddam Hussein's chemical attacks against both Iranian forces and his
own people introduced this generation to the horrors of such weapons.
The Aum Shinrikyo's use of sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway in March
1995 served as a wake-up call to the United States, combining with the
bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City to drive home
the realization to policy makers and public alike that the United
States was not immune from terrorism, that weapons of mass destruction
could be involved, and, perhaps most importantly, that we were not
prepared.
Today, administration witnesses report that perhaps as many as two-
dozen countries are pursuing chemical weapons capabilities. A
significant number are also seeking biological weapons. The pursuit of
chemical and biological weapons capabilities by terrorist groups such
as al Qaida has been well documented in court proceedings as well as in
the media.
Among the difficult lessons we have had to learn about chemical and
biological weapons is that they are not the same, and addressing the
challenges they pose--whether in terms of proliferation or terrorism--
will require a different mix of policy responses.
Among the mix of tools that must be applied in both cases, however,
must be arms control. This is not to argue that arms control must have
pride of place among those tools; indeed, it may be that arms control
is not the most important policy arena for dealing with either chemical
and biological weapons proliferation by states or their potential
acquisition by terrorists. But arms control can make a contribution,
and it should not be eliminated from the policy toolbox.
3If arms control is to make an effective contribution to the CBW
challenges, however, policy makers must have an appreciation of the
changes in the environment that will shape its application. In
particular, a number of factors are driving a need for new thinking.
The Convergence of States and Terrorists
Before the events of September 11 and the subsequent anthrax
attacks, analysts tended to conceptualize and address the state
proliferation challenge and the problem of terrorism along separate
tracks. This split approach prompted a focus on different strategies
and different policy tools for dealing with what were considered
distinct aspects of the problem, if not separate problems altogether.
Arms control, for example, was deemed to be targeted against state
proliferation and not designed to address the terrorist threat.
Such a separate approach in the world after September 11, however,
will no longer suffice. The distinction between proliferation and
terrorism and between terrorists and the state has become difficult to
draw. As a result, the United States and the international community
more broadly must implement a response to the chemical and biological
weapons challenge that deals with state proliferation and bioterrorism
as different aspects of the same problem. This will require an approach
that is strategic in nature, multifaceted in action, and which exploits
a range of tools.
Arms control is important in this context, but the combination of
politics, science and technology, and treaty language that surrounds
both the Chemical Weapons Convention and, especially, the Biological
Weapons Convention ensures that these conventions will be insufficient
on their own. Nor does an emphasis on arms control alone provide a
sufficiently wide perspective to facilitate all of the varied actions
that will be required by all of the necessary actors--from both the
public and private sectors--to deal effectively with the now realities
that the convergence of state and non-state challenges present. What is
needed is an approach that goes beyond the traditional modalities of
arms control to new ways of thinking about how to strengthen the
conventions and the norms against biological and chemical weapons that
they embody.
Advancing Science and Technology
Chemistry and biology and their associated technologies have
witnessed incredibly rapid advances in recent years, and, if anything,
the pace of change is likely to accelerate. Rapid changes in
biotechnology in particular in the next several years will shape new
scientific and business methods and practices far removed from those of
today. Moreover, many of the breakthroughs in the relevant sciences and
technologies are likely to be promoted by combining them with other
technologies--for example, nanotechnology, cutting-edge information
technologies, and new materials science. Creative scientists and
technologists could find new ways of putting such things together to
advance their CBW capabilities. In essence, advancing science and
technology will allow future proliferators--whether governments or
terrorists--to enter the chemical and biological weapons game with a
greater scientific and technological base on which to build their
efforts.
Classic arms control will have difficulty in capturing this
dynamism. Government bureaucracies are notoriously slow to adapt.
International organizations are no less so. The vastly different rates
at which science will move forward and governments can adapt, require a
broader approach that facilitates an ongoing appreciation of the
evolving scientific and technological landscape in as close to real-
time as possible.
Engaging Industry More Productively
In areas associated with commercial activities based on the life
sciences in particular, those involved emphasize the vast contributions
their rapidly advancing scientific and industrial capability is making
to the improved quality of life for many people. Not everyone shares
the view, however, of advancing life sciences in a commercial context
as an unalloyed good. Unscrupulous drug companies or other
biotechnology enterprises, for example, have recently been portrayed as
villains in popular novels and movies. The fact that advanced
biotechnology is given a dark dimension in the popular culture captures
a sentiment among the public that, at the very least, reflects
uncertainty and uneasiness about industry dealing with issues generated
by the advancing life sciences and related technology.
Representatives from U.S. biotechnology and pharmaceutical
industries could argue that they participated extensively in the BWC
protocol negotiating process, at least insofar as they interacted with
government representatives engaged in the negotiations. Some
characterizations of industry involvement, however, suggest that it was
industry opposition that influenced the Bush administration's decision
not to support the draft protocol. While such a characterization is not
entirely accurate, industry certainly preferred a minimalist approach
in the protocol that would have created the least demanding obligations
possible. It is also fair to say that industry often did not display an
overly cooperative attitude.
Looking to the future, there is little to suggest that industry
would change its approach if another protocol-style effort were put
forward as the means by which to pursue biological arms control.
Something different is needed, and governments must do better with
industry. As the drivers of much of the critical science and
technology, industry must be made to understand its stakes in the
challenge and be fully integrated into the necessary strategic
response. Given the growing public and governmental concerns over
developments in biotechnology, it would also be very much in the
interests of the biotechnology industry to cooperate in promoting
proper, safe, and ethical practices around the world.
The Way Forward
In responding to this environment, the arms control contributions
to addressing the chemical and biological weapons challenges begin from
different starting points and are likely to take different courses.
Challenges to Chemical Arms Control
The first challenge in eliminating the scourge of chemical weapons
is to destroy those weapons that already exist. Although the
destruction process in the United States is proceeding reasonably well,
its counterpart in Russia is far behind schedule. It is doubtful in the
extreme that Russia will meet the timetable specified in the CWC, even
if it is granted the one-time, five-year extension allowed by the
convention.
This predicament is first and foremost a problem for the Russians
themselves. Moscow is clearly committed to making progress, but its
reported financial commitments will not be sufficient to meet its
treaty obligations. Ways must be found to promote a greater commitment
from Russia itself. Beyond promoting greater Russian expenditures,
however, those countries that have an interest in the destruction of
the Russian CW stockpile--which is, in essence, every state party to
the CWC--should provide more assistance. In particular, the Europeans
and Japanese should do more. The CWC Review Conference scheduled for
next year should provide an opportunity for developing a support
strategy to meet this challenge, which represents the single most
important objective of the CWC.
Moscow is not likely to be the only target of criticism during the
Review Conference, however. Washington will come in for its share of
censure as well, particularly for the three unilateral exemptions
included in the U.S. implementing legislation. Prior to the Review
Conference, therefore, the administration should assess the impact of
these provisions on CWC implementation, including their effects on the
general political environment. This assessment would then provide the
context for judging whether the potential benefits of retaining them
outweigh the costs. Based on that assessment, the administration could
convey to the Review Conference that whatever problems have been
created for the convention by this legislation will be addressed.
A third set of issues that must be addressed relates to challenge
inspections under the CWC. In many ways, the challenge inspection
provision is the single most important tool in the entire convention.
To date, however, that provision has never been invoked, although
suspicions have been raised that some states parties are in substantive
violation of their commitments. The United States, for example, claims
publicly that Iran continues to violate the treaty, yet Washington has
never followed up these allegations by requesting a challenge
inspection in Iran.
The longer such provisions are not used, the more difficult it will
become to do so. As a result, the international community could lose a
critical tool for promoting the fundamental goals of the CWC.
A fourth important issue that must be addressed is the adaptability
of the CWC to advances in chemical science and technology. As noted,
certain areas of chemistry and biology relevant to the CWC are changing
rapidly and will continue to do so. In the area of toxins, for example,
advanced biotechnology can create novel toxins that have scientific or
medical applications but can also be misused as weapons.
The CWC's Scientific Advisory Board is engaged in a process with
the U.S. National Academy of Science to examine the critical areas of
scientific advance that warrant attention from CWC states parties.
Their work will represent an important input into the forthcoming
Review Conference. Consideration should be given, however, to an
ongoing process that provides updated information on this critical
issue to states parties on a sustained basis.
A fifth area of effort should focus on issues of cooperation and
assistance. During the first five years of CWC implementation, states
parties and the OPCW have tended to view assistance issues as secondary
to operational matters such as declarations and inspections. Because
the assistance provisions of the CWC have important political
implications, however, they should not be ignored. The Review
Conference provides a good opportunity to demonstrate interest in
making tangible progress in this area.
The issue of international cooperation is important in light of the
ongoing debate over the future of chemical export controls. The
Australia Group (AG) has been a particular target for some non-aligned
countries that find it to be discriminatory and inconsistent with the
spirit if not the letter of the convention. Australia Group members
respond that as long as they have the right to make their own judgments
as to which countries are in compliance with the treaty, they also have
the right and the obligation to determine to whom they will export
relevant chemical and equipment and how they will make and implement
those decisions.
As science and technology continues to advance and global
technology diffusion proceeds, this question will become increasingly
difficult to manage. While export controls continue to make a
contribution, the fact that they only buy time to help other tools of
policy to work raises the question of how much time and effort should
be put into preserving them.
The final area which chemical arms control must address relates to
the institutional context within which those arms control efforts
proceed, particularly straightening out problems with the Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). For some time, the OPCW
has been plagued with financial and staff problems that must be fixed.
In some cases, the solutions rest in the states parties fulfilling
their obligations in a timely matter. But some of the budget problems
are structural and will require the organization to define new ways of
doing business to set the situation right. On staffing questions the
OPCW already has a reputation of being overly sensitive to ``pay and
promotion'' matters such as its salary scale relative to other
international organizations.
A second set of issues relate to national representation to the
OPCW. Many states parties cover activities at the organization with a
junior diplomat from their bilateral embassy to The Netherlands. Such
officials often lack the technical capability and political authority
to make decisions or even effective interventions. Although important
decisions are matters for national capitals, the current generally low
level of representation at the OPCW complicates and hampers the work of
the organization and makes it less efficient and effective.
Finally, questions of institutional leadership have arisen. It is
clear that the OPCW leadership has lost the confidence of some of the
key CWC players. Such a situation cannot be allowed to continue for
very long as it creates an environment that is severely detrimental to
staff morale and effective action. If the OPCW is not led in a manner
that generates confidence among those countries whose support is
critical, treaty implementation will suffer. The focus of attention
will be on internal issues rather than on getting the job done. And the
job is critical and should come first. A means for resolving the
current dispute must be found.
Challenges to Biological Arms Control
If the international community is to use arms control effectively
in addressing biological weapons proliferation and bioterrorism, it
must address the political problems that plagued past biological arms
control efforts, including the Ad Hoc Group's attempt to negotiate a
legally binding protocol to the BWC. Five issues, in particular, must
be addressed.
The first question must be the goals of the next arms control
steps. Obviously, the more robust the goals, the more challenging they
will be to implement successfully. The goal clearly cannot be BWC
``verification.'' Even Ad Hoc Group members accepted the fact that the
BWC cannot be verified under current circumstances. The AHG goal,
therefore, became defining measures that contributed to ``enhancing
confidence in compliance.'' They ultimately fell short of that goal as
well, indicating how difficult real progress in biological arms control
is.
Two sets of possible objectives for next steps suggest themselves.
One relates to more ``traditional'' arms control-related goals,
including confidence building, increasing transparency, or enhancing
consultations. Each of these objectives has conceptual and practical
political problems associated with them. None of them appears to be
sufficiently robust to energize the currently stagnant process.
An alternative approach is to go beyond traditional arms control
goals to define the aims altogether differently. To some extent this
was the goal of the Bush administration when it offered its package of
alternative measures at the Fifth Review Conference. In light of the
complex environment with which biological arms control must deal, as
well as the clear lack of success of traditional approaches, the need
for new thinking is clear. In particular, consideration must be given
to creating a new conceptual and policy environment within which
current challenges can be addressed. Such a new environment would mean
a move away from ``business as usual'' by all of the critical
stakeholders, including governments, industry, and the scientific
community. New partnerships among these key constituencies must be
developed. New means must be identified to address the speed of change
and integrate its most important aspects. This raises questions related
to the appropriate contributions of each of the key stakeholders,
including questions about the value of and potential for governance or
self-governance of the international biological scientific and
technological communities.
Second, part of Washington's problem with the draft protocol was
that it proposed expending considerable resources on activities not
clearly or directly associated with core proliferation concerns. In
announcing its rejection of the draft protocol, in its statement at the
Fifth Review Conference, and in discussions after the Conference was
suspended, for example, U.S. officials stressed that too little
attention has been paid to questions of non-compliance. Given this
clear U.S. priority, any next steps must address two core concerns
that, from Washington's perspective, the protocol did not highlight:
First, how do BWC states parties meet the critical, but often ignored
responsibility of dealing with countries who are party to the treaty
but are either cheating or suspected of doing so? Second, how do they
deal with those countries who are not states parties and therefore are
not breaking any commitments but are clearly violating a widely held
norm? These are not questions that members of the international
community necessarily are comfortable addressing. They would prefer to
assume that states that join a convention would comply with its
obligations. The reality, however, is that states cheat, and whatever
is done in the arms control arena must provide some attention to what
to do about those states that do.
Third, while its currency is military power, arms control is at its
core a political activity, and any successful next steps in the
biological field cannot ignore the political stakes to which some
participants in the process give high priority. Part of the reason the
protocol did not focus on core proliferation concerns is that the
drafters bent over backwards to meet the political requirement of some
participants that any multilateral agreement treat all states parties
the same. This political objective has been a hallmark of nonaligned
nations' positions in arms control negotiations since the NPT created
nuclear ``haves'' and ``have nots.'' Non-aligned states in particular
have used the ``rules of the game,'' particularly the requirement that
any agreement must be done by consensus, to insist on meeting this
political sine qua non.
Non-discrimination may be politically essential but it does not
necessarily create good arms control in a situation in which
participants are not equal in terms of their interests, assets, or
obligations. Moreover, the Bush administration has made it clear that
the protocol negotiations and, to some extent, the Review Conference
were conducted in a framework that, if not discredited, must now be set
aside. Will other participants agree since a new ``game'' may deprive
them of some critical leverage for achieving key political goals? If
progress is to be made, these imperatives must be reconciled. But can
they, and, if so, how?
Fourth, cooperation and assistance in the life sciences for
peaceful purposes is a political imperative of non-aligned countries
that they insist must be included in any nonproliferation agreement.
Some Ad Hoc Group participants made no secret of the fact that they
were involved not because of their concerns over biological weapons but
in order to secure new means of access to critical science and
technology. In the minds of some people, therefore, the packaging of
compliance measures and cooperation and assistance provisions in the
protocol distracted from the main objective of the protocol and the BWC
itself and created potential for confusion and competition among
priorities.
Conventional wisdom holds that no multilateral progress will be
made on harder-edged proliferation measures without something on
cooperation and assistance as well. If this is the case, any next steps
must find a way to reconcile these strongly held interests. But
conventional wisdom should also be challenged, and consideration of
next steps should also explore whether potential ``hard arms control''
and cooperation and assistance measures might be addressed on separate
tracks.
Finally, following the failure of the Ad Hoc Group negotiations and
the suspended Review Conference, some participants might want to
abandon arms control altogether and rely on other measures to fight BW
proliferation and biological terrorism. Even if arms control is
included in the tool kit for promoting BW nonproliferation and
bioterrorism, the priority it assumes in relation to other available
tools will be a critical factor in assessing how assertively and
successfully one might promote next steps in arms control.
In fact, differences have already emerged between the United States
and other countries, including friends and allies, over these relative
priorities. The United States, for example, tends to assess the value
of arms control and the contribution of instruments such as the BWC in
terms that relate them to other tools in the tool kit, including
intelligence, diplomacy, passive and active defenses, military options,
and export controls. Arms control is appreciated for its contribution,
but its limitations are also recognized, and maximizing its potential
is seen to derive from making it work together effectively with other
policy tools. In contrast (and to overstate for emphasis), some
Europeans tend to give pride of place in the tool kit to arms control.
Some even view arms control as an alternative to these other policy
tools rather than as a complement to them. The result is that some
friends and allies of the United States rely more heavily on the
contribution of arms control in dealing with the problem of
proliferation than does Washington. Such differences must be explored
in an assessment of the potential utility and effectiveness of next
steps in BW arms control.
Additional Measures
The United States made it clear that it does not view the package
of measures it proposed at the Fifth Review Conference as a
comprehensive list of potentially valuable and negotiable measures.
Indeed, it should not. The U.S. proposals, supplemented by good ideas
that emerged through consultations with close friends and allies, form
the basis for moving forward, but more could be done. The following
ideas are offered as a contribution to thinking about further measures
that might be considered.
Strengthening the Ability to Confront the State/Terrorist
Convergence
The fact that the terrorist and state proliferation threats have
converged requires that the BWC be considered in light of what further
it might be able to contribute to the problem as a whole. The proposal
for domestic legislation that criminalizes BWC-prohibited activity is
one such measure that could be applied to both dimensions of the
challenge. Mother possibility, one that also serves the Article X
requirement for states parties to promote cooperation and assistance,
might focus on international collaboration on biological terrorist
issues. Such collaboration might be as limited as sharing information
on lessons learned from exercises. Additionally, it might extend to
direct cooperation in which those states parties that have done more in
the area of biological terrorism preparedness and response assist other
states parties whose capabilities in those areas are more limited.
Such collaboration would have to be done on a voluntary basis.
There are obviously areas related to counter-terrorism, including
preparedness efforts, that are highly sensitive and for which sharing
with others would not be appropriate. But the events of September 11
should have led all states parties to recognize that anyone could be
the object of biological terrorism and that the threat extends to
everyone. In such a situation, one could assume that some states
parties will be looking for help in addressing that threat. Providing
assistance under Article X of the BWC would be one means of meeting
their needs.
A second possible measure that could be explored for its value in
addressing the convergence of state BW proliferation and bioterrorism
relates to investigations. The proposed U.S. package included a
proposal for a mechanism to investigate suspicious outbreaks of disease
or alleged biological weapons use. The prospect of developing a
mechanism for investigating facilities that may be suspected of
conducting activities prohibited by the convention should also be
considered. While this is certain to be a controversial suggestion,
including within the U.S. government, the possibility of a limited
measure to this effect should be explored.
The historical example of the Sverdlovsk anthrax outbreak suggests
some of the reasons why. Even if the additional measures the United
States proposed had been in place in 1979, they would have afforded
only the opportunity for the investigation to go to the gates of the
facility that was thought to be the source of the release. No mechanism
would exist for allowing access to the facility. Without such access,
the result of any investigation at Sverdlovsk would still have been
unanswered questions, continuing allegations and denials, and, in
political terms, insufficient grounds for mobilizing an international
response to a potentially serious treaty violation. This could also be
the result of investigations conducted under the new U.S. proposals if
there is no ability to get inside suspect facilities.
The proposal offered here is analogous to the challenge inspection
provision of the CWC, an extraordinary measure that would be used only
when strong evidence exists of a serious violation. It is not in any
way an endorsement of the elaborate, and unhelpful, facility
declaration and visits system detailed in the draft protocol. Rather,
what is needed is a more limited, stand-alone capability that would
allow some means for seeing what is going on inside facilities about
which serious suspicions have been raised. The measure is offered in
the full realization that even getting inside a facility will not
necessarily yield a smoking gun.
It may be that the techniques are not yet available to allow for a
meaningful facility investigation that can also protect unrelated
national security or proprietary business information. Certainly, there
was considerable debate during the protocol negotiations over differing
interpretations of the results of various on-site trial activities. It
would be unfortunate, however, if consideration of the possibility of
doing facility investigations stopped completely because it was deemed
``too hard'' or ``too dangerous.'' One need not commit now to the
realization of such a measure, but as monitoring technology continues
to evolve, including technology based on advancing life sciences,
exploring further what procedures might be helpful could prove to be a
worthwhile effort.
Coming to Grips with Advancing Science and Technology
In its proposal package, the United States called for better
oversight of genetic engineering on the grounds that certain
experiments involving the cutting and splicing of genetic material
could have dramatic and unexpected consequences with relevance for
biological weapons. However, it is not just genetic manipulation that
creates potential and unexpected risks, but the combination of better
understanding of life at the molecular level with other scientific
advances, including nanotechnology, materials science, and
bioinformatics. BWC states parties might consider, therefore, whether
there is anything in these combinations of scientific activities that
could also create sufficient risks to warrant greater oversight and
reporting. BWC states parties, therefore, could convene a working group
of scientific experts charged with identifying combinations of
scientific activity that could create serious potential threats. The
panel could also elaborate what kind of national oversight of such
activities would be appropriate.
A further dimension of advancing life sciences and technology that
will have important implications for the evolution of the biological
weapons threat is their growing global dissemination. Indeed, the way
in which science and technology is developed, produced. and
disseminated on a global basis has changed significantly in the years
since the BWC entered into force. Much of the material is dual use; the
private sector is responsible for most of the advances; knowledge and
capability will only become increasingly dispersed around the world as
biology and biotechnology are applied to more aspects of life.
States parties to the BWC should try in general to identify ways to
ensure that this global diffusion of science and technology does not
result in a more serious BW threat and, in particular, to ascertain
ways to bolster Article m of the BWC which prohibits transfers of
biological weapons and related-materials. The draft protocol included a
provision that created a consultation mechanism whereby one state's
concern that an unauthorized, inappropriate, or prohibited transfer has
occurred could be raised with the state party that made the transfer.
Although it is an excellent idea, such a provision would have no chance
of being adopted in light of the contentious dispute about export
controls that plagued the Ad Hoc Group negotiations.
The continuing debate, however, may provide an opportunity for an
evaluation of longterm management of the diffusion of biological-
related science and technology. This is not a call to abandon the
Australia Group whose activities will remain important for the
foreseeable future. Rather, it is a plea to recognize that the new
environment within which the biological weapons problem must be
addressed will include a rapidly changing scientific and technological
global landscape.
Fostering Better Appreciation of the Need for a New
Conceptual and Policy Environment
The confidence building measures (CBMs) agreed at the 1986 and 1991
Review Conferences will remain on the books. These voluntary measures
ask states parties to provide information regarding biological-related
activities, including past offensive BW programs, current biological
defense activities and facilities at which that work is being
conducted, unusual outbreaks of disease (to be reported to the World
Health Organization), and facilities involved in human vaccine
production, among others. It might be helpful for BWC states parties to
take another look at the CBMs to determine whether they can contribute
to the creation of the new broader conceptual and political approach
discussed earlier, either in their current or in an adapted form.
Some people might argue that any attempt to return to the CBMs
would be a waste of time. Because the measures are deemed politically
rather than legally binding, only a relatively small number of
countries provided the information called for in the CBMs even once,
let alone annually. Although the number of states parties participating
in the CBMs steadily increased, the generally poor performance suggests
that, left to their own devices, states parties are unlikely to
participate more than they have in the past.
The point, of course, is that states parties should not be left to
their own devices. Some of the CBMs could be replaced by elements of
the new U.S. proposal. But other CBMs will remain as part of the BWC
regime, and they should not just be abandoned. Rather, they should be
considered for what they might contribute to the new conceptual
framework. If they are deemed to be of some value, they should not be
dropped.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Dr. Sands.
STATEMENT OF AMY SANDS, PH.D., DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR
NONPROLIFERATION STUDIES, MONTEREY INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL
STUDIES
Dr. Sands. Mr. Chairman and distinguished Members of the
committee, let me just thank you for the opportunity to appear
before you this morning to examine a topic while extensively
discussed deserves, I believe, continued discussion and a new
look.
In my comments today, I plan to focus only on the changed
nature of today's world, trying to take a look at some of the
assumptions that we should be wary of, especially as they
relate to the chemical and biological threat and then look at a
few recommendations I'd like to make. In my written testimony,
I have provided much more detail on the chemical and biological
threat, giving specific examples of some state and terrorist
aspects.
Several factors have come together today to increase the
likelihood of CBW acquisition and use by states and subnational
groups. First, states and terrorists may see CBW as giving them
a new advantage. They know that we are incredibly worried about
such a possibility and may believe such an attack will not only
kill many Americans, but also could psychologically freeze the
United States.
Second, it has now become apparent that certain thresholds
have been passed. Our speculation of whether terrorists would
and could kill thousands of people has been answered.
Third, chem-bio materials are available and there is clear
evidence of terrorists being interested and capable of
obtaining these materials. The supply-demand dynamic definitely
favors terrorists.
Fourth, as September 11th events demonstrated, some
terrorist groups exist that are clearly capable of organizing
and operationalizing the type of complex, long-term effort that
would be needed to develop and effectively deliver CBW agents.
Finally, as has been commented already earlier today, the
technical workforce needed to develop effective CBW is
available and you might call them cheap. In the former Soviet
Union, hundreds perhaps thousands of scientists, engineers and
technicians were fired or had their wages cut after the Soviet
Union's collapse and President Yeltsin discontinued the BW
program.
It is likely that a substantial number of scientists and
engineers with expertise in the biological and chemical weapons
area are disgruntled and frustrated. But the concern about
clandestine recruitment of scientists should also include other
states, such as South Africa and the former Yugoslavia, both of
whom have discontinued CBW programs.
So it is not surprising given these factors, specifically
the increased access to materials, targets, expertise and
technology that we are now much more concerned about CBW
actually being used by states or substate actors. Against this
backdrop, though, I'd like to just take a look at certain
assumptions that we have tended to make when thinking about
this threat.
The first assumption, terrorists don't have physical
locations to make or store CBW materials. It is often argued
that terrorists may have safe havens, but still lack a physical
infrastructure to develop CBW. However, an overlooked point is
that terrorist groups can and have actually possessed
recognizable and targetable CBW facilities. Examples include,
the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan which according to
the Unites States government was really not a pharmaceutical
plant, but a chemical weapons manufacturing complex that was
engaged in the production of nerve agent VX.
Second, I think it is well known that Aum Shinrikyo had a
compound in Japan that they used for much of their activities
and a farm in Australia.
Third, a group called the World Islamic Fund Against Jews
and Crusaders which was founded by bin Ladin managed to buy up
a set of facilities in the former Yugoslavia that had been used
for chemical and biological weapons.
So as you can see from these cases, terrorists have had
access to or possession of facilities. Some of these may even
be located outside the safe havens they have and may appear
legitimate, making the task of detecting and identifying them
accurately much more difficult.
A second assumption. A certain set of chemical and
biological agents such as VX, sarin, anthrax and smallpox are
usually considered the most likely CBW agents to be used. This
way of thinking may cause us to miss the obvious. Cyanide for
example, is a chemical that has sometimes been overlooked as a
weapon in favor of the more lethal and glamorous chemical
agents like sarin and VX, yet the availability of various
cyanide containing compounds which are used widely in
industrial processes, make cyanide one of the more likely CBW
agents to be used.
The WMD terrorism database at the Center for
Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute records 52
possessions, plots or uses involving cyanide by terrorists.
These cases have, so far, collectively resulted in only 124
injuries and 13 fatalities. But the danger lies more in the
intent of the perpetrators than the results.
My written testimony lists some of the other examples, but
today I'd just like to focus on two specific issues. One is the
most recent case in Chicago that happened in early March where
a man was found to be storing significant amounts of potassium
and sodium cyanide in subway tunnels. It highlights the ease
with which even a lone individual can acquire this poison.
And another example that happened in February 2002, with
the arrest in Rome of nine Moroccans with potential links to al
Qaeda for allegedly planning to poison the water supply of the
U.S. embassy using potassium cyanide. It shows that the
interest in cyanide is hardly waning.
A third assumption and one that we've already talked about
a little earlier today is that states won't provide terrorists
with chemical and biological weapons. Many of the states we
believe to have chemical and biological programs also have been
linked to numerous terror organizations providing them with a
wide variety of assistance. Even though there has been little
evidence to indicate that any of these states have transferred
CBW material, technology or know-how to such terrorist
organizations, the possibility cannot be ruled out.
But even if a state may not be willing to transfer CBW
related technologies to a subnational actor, one cannot
discount the possibility of rogue elements within a government
or disgruntled or underpaid scientists or individuals
sympathetic to terrorist causes that may be willing to
illicitly transfer CBW related technologies and know-how to
such terrorist groups.
A fourth assumption. Terrorists won't use CBW except in
extreme cases. Nonstate players, especially terrorists, do not
act under the same restraints as sovereign states. It is
possible that these organizations do not perceive the WMD
threshold the same way we do. Moreover, their assessment of the
costs and benefits of using CBW may not be necessarily measured
on the same scale as that of nations and their concept of
``extreme'' may differ considerably from ours.
In fact if the motivation of an organization is to infuse
terror, then the use of CBW, even on a small scale, might be
seen as furthering their cause. In addition, the disparity
between state and terrorist groups such as that between Israel
and Palestinian forces may create a terrifying inequality that
could lead to the use of CBW in an effort to rebalance the
scales. This exact thought was expressed in a Palestinian
weekly, which called for a Palestinian weapon of deterrence
using chemical and biological agents that would create a
balance of horror in the Palestinian and Israeli conflict.
So we should occasionally do a reality check and make sure
our assumptions are still valid. Now I would like to spend a
few minutes on some recommendations to try to address some of
these concerns.
A general comment. What is required is innovative thinking
and a reconceptualization of threats in the 21st century. It
requires a long-term dedication to a multi-dimensional and
multi-faceted approach that seeks to prevent WMD acquisition
and use, to strengthen anti-proliferation norms, to develop
adequate defenses here and elsewhere and to prepare for
effective consequent mitigation and management in the advent of
a WMD attack.
Specifically what are some of the activities that might
need to be pursued? There are six areas that I outline in my
written testimony as being critical for the United States if it
is going to be successful in its war on terrorism and WMD
proliferation. Let me mention all six, but I'm only going to
talk to three of them.
The six are, first of all, enhancing global WMD materials
protection, control and accounting. Secondly, supporting
displaced WMD scientists and technical experts to keep them
employed doing constructive socially beneficial projects.
Third, enhancing intelligence collection, analysis,
coordination and cooperation. Fourth, strengthening the public
health sector within the United States and internationally.
Fifth, renewing the international commitment to effective
implementation of both the CWC and BWC. And sixth, making
meaningful investments to address underlying causes of
terrorism such as poverty, illiteracy and socioeconomic
inequities.
As I said earlier, I plan to only talk to three of these
recommendations at this point. The first one I wanted to
address is enhancing global WMD materials protection, control
and accounting. It is clear that the United States must
continue its support of improved MPC&A procedures in the former
Soviet Union, but it also must expand these activities to
include sensitive, chem-bio materials and it must make them all
international in scope.
Specifically though, in evaluating the security and
protection globally of dangerous biological materials, it's
quite apparent that without much trouble terrorists could
easily steal or buy them illicitly. The United States and its
allies must make it a priority to fill the security gap by
pursuing vigorously enhanced national regulations that control
and secure deadly pathogens and toxins and by launching the
negotiation of a new bio-security convention.
Such a convention would complement the BWC by developing a
set of specific concrete regulations and activities that
guarantee the control, accounting, safety and security of
dangerous pathogens and toxins. I've attached a paper that's
going to be published in the next issue of the Bulletin of
Atomic Scientists that I've written with two of my colleagues
from the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in which we go
into much greater detail about this specific idea of the bio-
security convention.
To initiate such a process, the United States should work
with Europe, Japan and other like-minded states to develop the
national legislation needed to prevent misuse and unauthorized
access to dangerous biological agents and toxins. Using these
efforts as models, the U.S. must lead the effort on an
international level and with industry and academia to define
international standards of safety and security in the bio-
technology sector so that we will have more control over where
the materials of concern are, who has access to them, how they
are controlled and how they are stored and transferred.
A second recommendation is that we strengthen the public
health sector within the United States and internationally. We
need, obviously it's been said already today, to improve our
own public health sector, but we also need to work with other
international groups and foreign governments to the same
internationally.
The proposed draft legislation of Senator Biden and Helms
called the Global Disease Surveillance Act of 2002 reflects the
fact that given the speed of international travel, migration
patterns and commercial transportation networks, it will not be
enough to shore up American public health capabilities and
capacities, recognizing that the best BW delivery system might
be humans either knowingly or not.
Therefore we must assist others to develop capabilities for
disease monitoring, surveillance and response or else leave
ourselves vulnerable to the possible exposure to dangerous
diseases that could be locally contained. Having recognized the
need for more support in this area, the challenge, though, will
now be to sustain these efforts both in the United States and
elsewhere.
Since these activities have dual benefits enhancing both
national and international security and public health, it is
hoped that their value will be clearly evident and funding will
become an integral and ongoing element of our national and
public security systems.
My final recommendation that I want to talk about is
renewing international commitment to effective implementation
of both the CWC and BWC. Mike has said almost everything I
would want to say to tell you the truth, but let me just make
some general points.
As strange as it may seem, the nonproliferation regime is
at the crux of whether many of the dire fears about WMD become
reality. In the last decade, the United States and the UN
Security Council have claimed rhetorically that terrorism and
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are the
greatest threat to U.S. and international security, but the
actions of too many states call into question their long-term
commitment to anti-terrorism and nonproliferation goals.
The rhetoric appears hollow, the commitment to effective
action inadequate to the task. It will require U.S. leadership
to move forcefully forward. Leadership that involves working
within the CWC and BWC context to ensure compliance, to ensure
that there is securing of sensitive and dangerous materials and
to strengthen international nonproliferation norms. It will
require the United States and others to provide substantial new
funding and support to these efforts, to focus on the
international needs rather than domestic concerns and to take a
long-term rather than short-term approach to these problems.
To conclude, it is clear that what cannot happen is
business as usual. While terrorism and proliferation may not be
an issue in all parts of the world, it remains a substantial
threat in several regions and is capable of acting as a
catalyst to other states and subnational groups who might
rethink their own decisions not to acquire or to use weapons of
mass destruction. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Sands follows:]
Prepared Statement of Amy Sands, Ph.D.
Dear Mr. Chairman, distinguished Members of the committee, and
guests:
I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before you this morning
to discuss a topic that while, extensively discussed, deserves a new
look from a different perspective.\1\ In the wake of events following
September 11th, it is vital that we examine certain assumptions
regarding the acquisition and use of chemical and biological weapons.
It has become crucial that we go beyond traditional thinking and take a
close look at capabilities and motivations, not only of state actors
but also sub-national and terrorist organizations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ I am grateful to the staff at the Center for Nonproliferation
Studies at the Monterey Institute for their extensive help in preparing
this testimony. Specifically I would like to thank Dr. Raymond
Zilinskas, Jason Pate, Eric Croddy, Kimberly McCloud, Gary Ackerman,
Cheryl Loeb and Jennifer Arbaugh.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
overview of the cbw threat: a traditional review
Since the end of the Cold War, the acquisition and potential use of
chemical and biological technologies and materials by state and sub-
state actors has become an increasingly real threat. The recent trend
towards chemical and biological weapons (CBW) terrorism--most notably
the 1995 sarin nerve agent attack in the Tokyo subway and the actual
use of anthrax against individuals in the United States, coupled with
the state level proliferation of offensive CBW programs, have created a
security environment in which defending against chemical and biological
attacks by states as well as sub-national groups must be the top
priority.
The anthrax letter attacks that occurred last fall only hint at the
potential for casualties and widespread panic associated with a BW
event. The 9/11 terrorists were able to plot and train secretly over
several years to massacre thousands of people and die in the effort. It
is conceivable that terrorists with similar dedication could
deliberately obtain, weaponize, and disseminate a contagious pathogen
such as smallpox or plague, and the results could make September 11th
pale in comparison. In an era where people can literally move anywhere
around the world within 36 hours--far less than the incubation period
of many diseases of concern--all nations could be affected. In
addition, advances in biotechnology, and the proliferation of BW know-
how and dual-use equipment, might make it possible for terrorists to
engineer highly virulent, antibiotic-resistant ``designer'' pathogens
to suit their needs.
Given the destructive possibility of CBW, it is worth quickly
reviewing the ``state of play.'' The rest of this section will be
devoted to examining state-level CBW capabilities and sub-national
groups' interest in and use of CB agents.
CAW Proliferation: State Level
Although the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and Biological
Weapons Convention (BWC) impose restrictions on the acquisition and use
of these weapons, many states continue to pursue clandestine and
offensive CBW capabilities. Roughly 13 states are believed to be
actively seeking biological weapons and nearly 20 may be pursuing
chemical warfare capabilities. Proliferant states of particular concern
include China, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, North Korea, Russia,
Sudan, and Syria (for more information on state programs please see our
website at http://www.cns.miis.edu/research/cbw/possess.htm). The
analysis here is divided into two categories: 1) unique state threats
and 2) other state actors.
Unique State Threats:
North Korea
An analysis of open sources indicates that North Korea has operated
an extensive CW program for many years. It is probable that adamsite,
mustard, hydrogen cyanide, cyanogen chloride, phosgene, sarin, soman,
tabun, and VX are among the agents in its chemical weapons arsenal. In
the biological sphere, North Korea has reportedly pursued BW
capabilities since the 1960s, and continues research with possible
production of anthrax, plague, yellow fever, typhoid, cholera,
tuberculosis, typhus, smallpox, and botulinum toxin. North Korea is not
party to the CWC but has acceded to the BWC.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr., The Deterrence Series, Case Study 5:
North Korea, (Alexandria, VA: Chemical and Biological Arms Control
Institute, 1998), p. 5; U.S. Department of Defense, Proliferation:
Threat and Response 2001, [http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/
ptr20010110.pdf], pp. 10-11; Institute for National Strategic Studies,
Strategic Assessment 1997, Flashpoints and Force Structure,
(Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1997), [http://
www.ndu.edu/ndu/inss/sa97/sa97ch11.html]; Russian Federation Foreign
Intelligence Service, A New Challenge After the Cold War: Proliferation
of Weapons of Mass Destruction, p. 99; ``The Actual Situation of North
Korea's Biological and Chemical Weapons,'' Foresight, February 17,
2001, pp. 24-25, translated in FBIS; ``South Korea Says North Has
Biological, Chemical Weapons,'' Kyodo News Service, October 23, 1992;
North Korea Advisory Group, Report to the Speaker, U.S. House of
Representatives, November 1999; Bill Gertz, ``Hwang Says N. Korea Has
Atomic Weapons; Pyongyang Called Off Planned Nuclear Test,'' The
Washington Times, June 5, 1997, p. A12; Republic of Korea, Ministry of
National Defence, White Paper, 2000, [http://www.mnd.go.kr/mnden/
emainindex.html].
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North Korea's CW capabilities tell us something about how they
might use these weapons. Reflecting Soviet military doctrine, North
Korea has traditionally viewed chemical weapons as an integral part of
any military offensive. There are no indications that this view has
altered since the end of the Cold War. The most obvious tactical use of
chemical weapons by North Korea would be to terrorize South Korean
civilians. Seoul lies within easy striking distance of North Korea's
artillery and rocket systems and, today, the South Korean civilian
population has no protection against CW attack.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ North Korea Advisory Group, Report to the Speaker, U.S. House
of Representatives, November 1999.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In terms of more traditional conflicts, the rugged terrain of the
northern region of the demilitarized zone affords two main routes for
North Korea to capture, or at least lay siege to Seoul, while
attempting to deny US forces from landing at strategic ports. It is
highly likely that chemical weapons would be used against hard military
targets in the South, such as airfields and ports, not only spreading
death and injury to a wide area of South Korean personnel, but
contaminating these installations with persistent blister and/or nerve
agents for area denial. Finally, because much of the North's success
relies on preventing US assets in the region coming to the aid of the
South, especially those forces deployed in Okinawa and Guam, the latter
two could be targeted by Nodong-1, Nodong-2 and Taep'odong missiles,
possibly armed with chemical warheads.
It is unclear how the use of BW agents could play in North Korean
military planning. While a number of delivery systems mentioned above
could be employed to use BW agents against South Korean and US forces,
is unknown what validated weapons systems are currently in the North
Korean arsenal. As part of an overall offensive, Northern infiltrators
in the South could conduct sabotage operations using BW agents, as well
as biological assaults from North Korean specialized units. Whether by
sophisticated aerosolized agents (anthrax) or crude contamination of
food or beverages, such operations may be set into motion if the North
decides to conduct full scale military operations against South Korea.
Former Soviet Union/Russia
Probably an even more problematic and troubling situation exists in
some of the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union (FSU)
because of the scale of its CBW programs, which had developed large
quantities of chemical and biological agent for use in a variety of
weapons and military scenarios. Insuring the safety and security of
these materials while they await destruction presents a significant
challenge, but it is not the only legacy of these programs that
requires attention.
Western security experts and policy-makers must take seriously the
dangers posed by the scope, history, and enduring capabilities of the
Soviet offensive BW program. First, the US government, among others,
fears that President B. Yeltsin's 1992 decree ordering the
dismantlement of FSU's BW program is being disobeyed and that secret,
BW-related activities contravening the BWC continue in the Russian
Federation. The three military biological laboratories at Kirov, Sergei
Posad, and Sverdlovsk, which remain closed to foreigners, are
especially worrisome in this regard.
In addition, we know that FSU's BW program developed a number of
pathogens and toxins for use as biological weapons. While we may not
know all the program's accomplishments, it is reasonable to believe
that some would be state-of-the-art, possibly posing threats to the
West that it is unprepared to meet. A Russian BW program, if it exists,
can be expected to build on past accomplishments. It is therefore
disturbing to read that Russian military scientists developed new
anthrax and plague bacterial strains resistant to antibiotics. For
these reasons, a continuing Russian BW program would pose much greater
security threats to the West than would the suppressed program of Iraq,
or the incipient programs of other proliferant nations, who for the
most part are believed to depend on classical agents and technologies
developed during and just after World War II.
Turning to the former Soviet Union's CW program, Russia has been in
technical noncompliance with the CWC almost since the treaty entered
into force. Dealing with catastrophic economic, political, and social
problems has left Moscow unable to fulfill its obligations under the
CWC. The primary reason for Russian noncompliance has been its
inability to destroy its stockpiles in a timely manner. This failure
has more to do with lack of funding and the capacity of existing
destruction facilities than any real desire by Russia to violate the
CWC. However, it has been alleged that Russia purposefully lied in its
declarations to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW) to hide the actual size of its arsenal. In addition,
Russia may have secretly destroyed CW in an effort to help with this
obfuscation as well as providing false information several years prior.
In March 1994, Valerii Menshikov, a consultant to the Russian National
Security Council, said that the Soviet Union had indeed lied in its
declarations udder the 1989 Memorandum of Understanding with the United
States.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Amy E. Smithson, ``A Commentary on the Russian Factor,'' in
Brad Roberts, ed., Ratifying the Chemical Weapons Convention
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies,
1994), p. 102.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even more disturbing than the possibility of false declarations and
secret efforts to hide arsenal size is the suspicion that Russia has
developed, and may be continuing to develop, a next generation type of
chemical agent. \5\ The program, nicknamed ``Novichok'' or ``new guy,''
might include agents that are outside the current CWC list of
prohibited agents. The first compliance question here is determining
the existence of the Novichok program. The main problem lies in the
fact that even if the program exists, the agents may not be covered by
the CWC. It remains then either to make sure that the CWC covers
Novichok, or that there is some way to address this possible
noncompliance that may not violate the letter of the treaty, but
certainly violates its spirit.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ See: Dr. Vil S. Mirzayanov, ``Dismantling the Soviet/Russian
Chemical Weapons Complex: An Insider's View,'' Chemical Weapons
Disarmament in Russia: Problems and Prospects (Washington, DC: The
Henry L. Stimson Center, 1995) p. 24-25; Clifford Krauss, ``US Urges
Russia To End Production of Nerve Gas,'' The New York Times, February
6, 1997. p. A7; and Frank Von Hippel, ``Russian whistleblower faces
jail,'' Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 49 (May 1993), [http://
www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1993/m93/m93vonhippel.html].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other State Actors:
China
Even though it is a member state of the both CWC and BWC, it is
possible that China is pursuing, or has pursued, chemical and
biological weapons programs. China claims to have destroyed three
production facilities in keeping with its obligations under the CWC.\6\
When looking at evidence of its commitment to the CWC, China appears
not to have any CW stockpiles or current production capabilities.
However, US intelligence sources maintain that China retains a
``moderate'' stockpile of CW and has ``not acknowledged the full extent
of its chemical weapons program,'' even though it ratified the CWC in
1997.\7\ Moreover, China has a large civilian chemical and
pharmaceutical production infrastructure that could quickly be
redirected toward the production of chemical and biological agents.\8\
These uncertainties about China's current activities are compounded by
the fact that it has not revealed the scope and nature of its past
programs. This lack of transparency, although occurring within the
context of technical compliance and diplomatic commitment to the
regime, nonetheless fails to provide sufficient confidence-building. In
China's case, the infrastructure for weapons development might exist,
but the state may have indeed destroyed its stockpile. Simply put,
without more information, China's true capabilities remain a mystery
and its intent is clouded.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Ibid., p. 67.
\7\ Proliferation: Threat and Response, Department of Defense
(2001), p.15.
\8\ Rear Admiral Thomas Brooks, Director of Naval Intelligence,
statement before the Subcommittee on Seapower, Strategic and Critical
Materials, U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Armed
Services, ``Hearings on National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal
Years 1992 and 1993 before the Committee on Armed Services,'' 102[nd]
Congress, Second Session, March 7, 1991, (Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office, 1993), p. 107; U.S. Department of Defense,
Proliferation: Threat and Response 2001, [http://www.defenselink.mil/
pubs/ptr20010110.pdf], p. 14; U.S. Department of State, ``Adherence To
and Compliance With Arms Control Agreements,'' 1998 Report submitted to
the Congress, Washington, DC, [http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/
reports/annual/comp98.html].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Egypt
The first Arab country to develop, produce, stockpile, deploy, and
use chemical weapons (Yemen Civil War), Egypt has pursued a chemical
weapons program since the early 1960s. In its chemical weapons arsenal,
it is probable that Egypt possesses mustard, phosgene, sarin, and VX.
In the biological sphere, it is believed that Egypt has been pursuing a
BW program since the early 1970s, and likely maintains an offensive
program. Egypt is not a party to either the CWC or the BWC.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Avner Cohen, ``Israel and Chemical/Biological Weapons: History,
Deterrence, and Arms Control,'' The Nonprolferation Review, Vol. 8 No.
3 (Fall-Winter 2001), pp. 27-53; Dany Shoham, ``Chemical and Biological
Weapons in Egypt,'' The Nonprolferation Review, 5 (Spring-Summer 1998),
pp. 48-58; Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Adherence to and
Compliance with Arms Control Agreements: 1998 Annual Report to
Congress, [http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/reports/annual/
comp98.html].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Iran
Even though Iran is a party to both the CWC and the BWC, it appears
to have continued to pursue offensive CBW capabilities. Iran is
believed to have initiated both its chemical and biological weapons
programs in the mid-1980s. In its chemical weapons arsenal, Iran has
manufactured and stockpiled mustard, sarin, hydrogen cyanide, cyanogen
chloride, and phosgene. In regards to BW, Iran has conducted research
on anthrax, foot and mouth disease, botulinum toxin, and mycotoxins. It
is likely that Iran maintains an offensive BW program.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ Cordesman, ``Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East,''
[http/www.csis.org/mideast/reports/WMDinMETrends.pdf], 1999, pp. 38-40;
Robert J. Einhorn, Testimony Before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Washington, DC, October 5, 2000, [http://www.state.gov/www/
policy__remarks/2000/001005__einhorn__sfrc.html]; U.S. Department of
Defense, Proliferation: Threat and Response 2001, [http://
www.defenselink.mil/pubs/ptr20010110.pdf], p. 36; Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), ``Report of Proliferation-Related Acquisition in 2001,''
(Washington, DC: U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, 2001), [http://
www.odci.gov/cia/publications/bian/bian__feb__ 2001.htm]; Anthony
Cordesman, Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iran: Delivery Systems, and
Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear Programs, (Center for Strategic and
International Studies, April 28, 1998), [http://www.csis.org/mideast/
reports/WMDinIran4-28-98.html].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Iraq
While the current status of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons
programs remains unknown due to continuous refusals to allow inspectors
from the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection
Commission (UNMOVIC) into the country, it is widely believed that Iraq
is continuing to pursue offensive chemical and biological weapons
programs. Prior to the expulsion of the United Nations Special
Commission (UNSCOM) inspectors in 1998, it was ascertained that Iraq
had mustard, sarin, tabun, VX, and Agent 15 in its chemical weapons
arsenal, along with a sizeable stockpile of chemical munitions. Iraq
weaponized the biological agents anthrax, botulinum toxin, ricin,
aflatoxin, and wheat cover smut, and conducted BW related research on
brucellosis, hemorrhagic conjunctivitis virus (Enterovirus 70),
rotavirus, camel pox, gas gangrene toxin, and possibly plague.\11\ Iraq
is not a member of the CWC, but acceded to the BWC as a condition of
the Gulf War ceasefire agreement.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ United Nations, United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM),
``Fourth Report under Resolution 1051,'' (June 10, 1997), [http://
www.un.org/Depts/unscom/sres97-774.htm]; United Nations, United Nations
Special Commission (UNSCOM), ``Latest Six-Monthly Report,'' (April 16,
1998), [http://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/sres98-332.htm]; U.S. Department
of Defense, Proliferation: Threat and Response 2001, [http://
www.defenselink.mil/pubs/ptr20010110.pdf] pp. 4 1-42; Steve Bowman,
Iraqi Chemical & Biological Weapons (CBW) Capabilities, CRS Issue
Brief, (Congressional Research Service, April 1998), [http://
www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/98042705 __npo.html]; Milton Leitenberg,
Biological Weapons in the Twentieth Century: A Review and Analysis,
[http://www.fas.org/hwc/papers/hw20th.htm], 2001; Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency, Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control
Agreements: 1995 Annual Report to Congress, [http://
www.dosfan.lib.uic.edu/acda/reports/complian.htm].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Israel
The roots of Israel's biological and chemical weapons programs can
be traced back to 1948, and the mid-1950s, respectively. Even though
little information on the highly secretive programs exists in open
sources, it is widely believed that Israel has a large chemical weapons
defensive program and is capable of producing and stockpiling various
chemical agents. In the biological sphere, Israel is conducting a wide
array of biological weapons related research, with a possible
production of numerous types of agents. The current CBW program is
located at the Israeli Institute of Biological Research (IIBR) at Ness
Ziona. Israel is not a party to either the CWC or the BWC. \12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Avner Cohen, ``Israel and Chemical/Biological Weapons:
History, Deterrence, and Arms Control,'' The Nonproliferation Review,
Vol. 8 No. 3 (Fall-Winter 2001), pp. 27-53; Russian Federation Foreign
Intelligence Service, A New Challenge After the Cold War: Proliferation
of Weapons of Mass Destruction, 1993; Cordesman. ``Creeping
Proliferation Could Mean a Paradigm Shift in the Cost of War and
Terrorism,'' [http:/www.csis.org/mideast/stable/3h.html].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Libya
Since the 1980s, Libya has produced more than 100 metric tons of
nerve and blister agents at the Rabta facility, employed chemical
weapons against Chadian troops in 1987, and has attempted to build an
underground production facility at a site called Tarhunah. Chemical
agents believed to be in Libya's arsenal include mustard, sarin, tabun,
lewisite, and phosgene. Libya has conducted research on biological and
toxin agents, although the extent of the program is unknown. It is
possible, however, that Libya could produce small quantities of BW
agents. Libya is not a member of the CWC, but has acceded to the
BWC.\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence Service, A New
Challenge After the Cold War: Proliferation of Weapons of Mass
Destruction, 1993, p. 100; Cordesman, ``Weapons of Mass Destruction in
the Middle East,'' [http://www.csis.org/mideast/reports/
WMDinMETrends.pdf], 1999, p. 17; Department of Defense, Proliferation:
Threat and Response 2001, [http://www.defense link.mil/pubs/
ptr2001O10.pdf], p. 46; Joshua Sinai, ``Libya's Pursuit of Weapons of
Mass Destruction,'' The Nonproliferation Review, 4, (Spring-Summer
1997), p. 94; Robert J. Einhorn, Testimony Before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Washington, DC, October 5, 2000, [http://
www.state.gov/www/policy__remarks/2000/001005__einhorn__sfrc.html];
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Adherence to and Compliance with
Arms Control Agreements: 1998 Annual Report to Congress, [http://
www.state.gov/www/global/arms/reports/annual/comp98.html].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sudan
Although a party to the CWC, evidence in the public domain suggests
that it is likely that Sudan has been developing a chemical weapons
capability since the 1980s. Sudan is heavily dependent upon foreign
assistance for its program, and has traditionally sought foreign
assistance from a number of countries that have CW programs, including
Iraq. It is possible that Sudan is pursuing a biological weapons
program, but there are no reports in the open source to confirm this.
Sudan is not a party to the BWC.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ Michael Bartletta, ``Chemical Weapons in the Sudan:
Allegations and Evidence,'' The Nonprolferation Review, Fall 1998;
Central Intelligence Agency, ``Unclassified Report to Congress on the
Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and
Advanced Convention Munitions, 1 January Through 30 June 2001 [http://
www.cia.gov/cia/publications/bian/bian__jan__2002.htm].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Syria
With an estimated CW stockpile in the hundreds of tons, it is
likely that Syria has one of the largest and most advanced chemical
weapons stockpiles in the Middle East even though it is dependent upon
foreign sources for precursor chemicals, materials and equipment, it is
likely that Syria is capable of producing and delivering mustard,
sarin, and VX. It is likely that Syria conducts biological weapons
research on anthrax, botulinum toxin, and ricin, with possible
production of such agents. Syria is not a party of the CWC or the
BWC.\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ U.S. Department of Defense, Proliferation: Threat and Response
2001, [http://www.defense link.mil/pubs/ptr20010110.pdf], p. 43;
Cordesman, ``Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East'', [http://
www.csis.org/mideast/reports/WMDinMETrends.pdf], 1999; Cordesman,
``Creeping Proliferation Could Mean a Paradigm Shift in the Cost of War
and Terrorism,'' [http://www.csis.org/mideast/stable/3h.html]; M.
Zuhair Diab, ``Syria's Chemical and Biological Weapons: Assessing
Capabilities and Motivations,'' The Nonproliferation Review, 5, (Fall,
1997), pp. 104-111; ``Devil's Brews Briefing: Syria,'' Centre for
Defence and International Security Studies, Lancaster University, 1996;
Central Intelligence Agency, ``Unclassified Report to Congress on the
Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and
Advanced Convention Munitions, 1 January Through 30 June 2001,''
[http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/bian/bian__jan__2002.htm].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Non-State Threat: A Fusion of Factors
Alone, the tragic events of September 11, 2001 should be a wake-up
call to action. When added together with the emergence of state-
sponsored and transnational forms of terrorism and the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) technologies and materials in the
post-Cold War period, it is clear that we are living in a new security
era in which the possibility that terrorists could acquire and use WMD,
including chemical and biological weapons, must be seen as real. The
anthrax letter attacks, although limited in the scope of their
lethality, suggest that future terrorists might well cross the weapons
of mass destruction threshold.
It is well known that several terrorist organizations have
expressed an interest in or already obtained chemical or biological
agents. Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese doomsday cult, showed its ability
to make and use sarin gas in the subway system in Tokyo, albeit not as
effectively as it had hoped or planned. The unknown assailant(s) that
have plagued the United States with anthrax-tainted letters have shown
that manufacturing and dispersement of lethal anthrax is possible.
Beyond these well known cases, there are extensive examples of
terrorists groups using, or attempting to use chem-bio agents. Other
organizations with known interest in chemical and/or biological weapons
include: al-Qa'ida. believed to have obtained chemical weapons from
Sudan and Iraq and biological agents from the Czech Republic,
Kazakhstan, and Indonesia; the Kurdistan Worker's Party, believed to
have the precursors needed to produce a sarin bomb; and the
Rajneeshees, a religious cult located in The Dalles, Oregon, actually
used Salmonella Typhimurium to contaminate food in local restaurants in
order to make voters ill before an upcoming election.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ David E. Kaplan, ``Aum Shinrikyo (1995),'' in Jonathan Tucker,
ed., Toxic Terror (Cambridge, MA.: Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs, 2000), pp 123, 128-129.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related to this sense of an increased threat is the reality that we
are all more vulnerable. Today's global community is the result of
several developments, including the diffusion of and increased reliance
on technology; increased access to information, technology, and
materials; ease of communication and transportation; and the openness
of more societies. This certainly enhances economic advancement, but
also creates more avenues of access for adversaries. Coupled with this
increased access to potential targets is the reality that most
countries or sub-national groups cannot defeat the United States in a
direct confrontation. These adversaries then look for ways to exploit
their access and our vulnerabilities. So, what is new is the
vulnerability of modern, open society to terrorists with such an open-
ended agenda. While we have moved away from the threat of global
annihilation, we may have moved closer to the actual use of mass
destruction weapons in situations where the United States may have
little influence or be the target. In short, Americans may not be
worried about a Russian nuclear attack, but now must fear a more random
set of events producing some catastrophe in their local environment,
without any notice or early indicators.
Moreover, it now has become apparent that certain thresholds have
been passed--until September 11th, no more than 1,000 Americans had
died in terrorist incidents at home or abroad since 1968. Our
speculation on whether terrorists would and could kill thousands of
people has been answered. The problem is that this should not have
surprised those of us in the field because, at least since the first
world trade center bombing, it has been clear that there existed a
network of terrorists, loosely tied by extreme Islamic teachings,
willing to try to cause harm to large numbers of people. Ramzi Yousef,
the perpetrator of that incident was quite clear in his intent in 1993
to kill 50,000 or more Americans. He and others planned a variety of
terrorist acts that if successful would have caused large numbers of
deaths and casualties.
Several factors have come together to increase the likelihood of
CBW acquisition and use by sub-national groups. First, terrorists may
see CBW as giving them a new advantage. They know we are incredibly
worried about such a possibility and may believe such an attack will
not only kill many Americans, but also could psychologically ``freeze''
the United States.
Second, chem-bio materials are available and there is clear
evidence of terrorists being interested in obtaining these materials.
This supply-demand dynamic could easily be played out at biological
research institutions in the FSU. If security is poor or lacking, as
many suspect at these institutions, they would be vulnerable to theft
of pathogens, toxins, and other material of potential use by criminals,
other countries, or terrorists. Most important, after theft, it would
be easy for the perpetrator to hide and transport seed cultures of
organisms that could be directly used in biological weapons or to
produce toxins.
Third, some terrorists groups exist that are clearly capable of
organizing and operationalizing the type of complex long term effort
that would be needed to develop and effectively deliver CBW agents. The
planning effort behind the September 11th events was both long term and
complex, and it surprised many that terrorists could sustain such an
effort. it clearly signaled a level of commitment and operational
thoroughness thought to be beyond most terrorist groups.
Fourth, cooperation between groups and with states possessing CBW
capabilities may be growing. An example of such cooperation is
reflected in Iran's relationship with three terrorist groups, Hamas,
Hizbollah, and Islamic Jihad. In April 2001, Iran reiterated its
unflinching support for those terrorist groups working against Israel
by hosting the International Conference on the Palestinian Intifada in
Tehran, which was convened by the Iranian parliament. Those invited
included leaders from Hamas, Hizbollah. and Islamic Jihad, presumably
to encourage greater cooperation between these groups in their
campaigns against Israel. At the conference, Iran's religious leader
Ayatollah Khamenei repeated his description of Israel as a ``cancerous
tumor'' ripe for removal.\17\
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\17\ Source: U.S. Department of State. ``Overview of State-
Sponsored Terrorism'' in Patterns of Global Terrorism 2000, Released by
the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, (April 2001), found
on the Internet at [http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2OOO/].
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Finally, the technical workforce needed to develop effective CBW is
available and ``cheap.'' This concern about workforce availability
deserves more attention. As is well known by now, the Soviet Union
established a powerful, well-funded secret program to acquire
biological weapons. In 1992, President B. Yeltsin acknowledged the BW
program's existence and decreed that it be discontinued and dismantled
in Russia. The decree's effect, when combined with the general decrease
in public support by the Russian government for science, led to drastic
funding cuts for the BW program. Although we do not know the full
consequences of these measures, some dedicated BW facilities (such as
Stepnogorsk) were closed down and many others downsized (including
Obolensk and Vektor). Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of scientists,
engineers, and technicians were fired or had their wages cut.
In general, the Western governments have viewed the condition of
the FSU weapons research institutions with apprehension. Whether the
mission of a weapons research institution lies in the biological,
chemical, or nuclear area, the problem is similar: What will happen to
the expertise inherent in these institutions as some dissolve and
others are down-sized? Two concerns of Western governments include:
Might institutions on the verge of extinction be contracted by foreign
governments or sub-national groups to develop weapons? And could
scientific workers that they employ be induced to relocate to
proliferant countries by offers of high salaries and bonuses?
Due to the difficult conditions under which science operates in the
FSU, and in consideration of the dissolving or diminishing weapons
research institutions, these countries are likely have a substantial
number of disgruntled and frustrated scientists and engineers with
expertise in the biological weapons area. Some may be enticed by high
salaries and other inducements to work for foreign governments, sub-
national groups, and criminals to develop biological weapons. It is
known that especially Iran has made strenuous attempts to recruit
weapons scientists to work in that country by offering them high
salaries (in excess of $6,000 per month).
But the concern about the clandestine recruitment of scientists
from dismantled CBW programs should also include South Africa and the
former Yugoslavia. CBW related activities first started in South Africa
under British rule in the 1930s and continued during the Second World
War with the production of mustard gas. But it was not until 1981 that
the official South African program, code-named Project Coast, began
operations. Ostensibly to provide the South African Defence Force with
detection and protection capabilities, Project Coast became a highly
secretive program that engaged in offensive research. With an annual
budget of 10 million dollars a year, and with an estimated staff of
200, Project Coast employed a number of scientists, physicians, and
technicians to work on both chemical and biological weapons research,
development, and production (exact numbers of scientists and other
employees of the program have not been published by the South African
Government). \18\
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\18\ Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South
Africa's Biological Warfare Program, INSS Occasional Paper 37, (USAF
Institute for National Security Studies, February, 2001),
[http:www.usafa.af.mil/inss/ocp37.htm].
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When Project Coast was terminated in 1993, it left a number of
weapons scientists and technicians suddenly out of work, therefore
raising the possibility that a number of these specialists may have
been induced to work for foreign governments and sub-national
organizations. Further compounding this threat is the knowledge that in
the early 1990s, after the termination of the CBW program, Dr. Wouter
Basson, the former head of the CBW program, made frequent trips
overseas. Of particular concern were a series of visits made to Libya
between 1992 and 1995 as a representative of a South African industrial
conglomerate Transnet, to promote its transportation and hospital
equipment interests. His lack of expertise in this field and his
special experience in CBW programs, combined with the efforts of the
Libyan government to develop an indigenous CBW capability, led to
concern that he was selling his CBW knowledge.\19\
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\19\ James Adams, ``Gadaffi Lures South Africa's Top Germ Warfare
Scientists,'' Sunday Times, February 26, 1995; Alexandra Zavis,
``Mandela Says Chemical Weapons Figures May Be in Libya,'' Associated
Press, March 2, 1995; Peta Thornycroft, ``Poison Gas Secrets Were Sold
to Libya,'' Weekly Mail & Guardian, 13 August 1998.
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Yugoslavia provides another example. Prior to its breakup in 1991,
the Yugoslav National Army had a chemical weapons program consisting of
four weapons facilities, three in Serbia and one in Bosnia. Chemical
agents in the Yugoslavian arsenal included sarin, mustard, and CS.\20\
It should be noted, however, that there is limited information in the
open source literature to determine accurately where many of the former
scientists currently reside. The possibility exists that former
Yugoslavian weapons scientists could have been recruited by foreign
state and sub-state actors interested in developing a chemical weapons
capability.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\20\ The Federation of American Scientists, ``Chemical Agents in
the Former Yugoslavia,'' Nuclear Forces Guide, [http://www.fas.org/
nuke/guide/serbia/cw/index.html], April 23, 2000; Judith Miller, ``U.S.
Officials Suspect Deadly Chemical Weapons in Yugoslav Army Arsenal,''
New York Times, April 16, 1999.] After the breakup of the country in
1991, it is believed that the army of the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia inherited much of the CBW program, Human Rights Watch,
Clouds of War: Chemical Weapons in the Former Yugoslavia, March 1997,
[http://www.hrw.org/reports/1997/clouds/].
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a cbw threat reality check
Having outlined the recognized state and terrorist threats, it is
worth looking at these threats from an additional dimension. Too often
we comfortably reiterate the same threat mantra without examining more
closely certain underlying assumptions. Discussed below are several
traditionally accepted statements often found in threat assessments
that deserve to be challenged.
Assumption: Terrorists don't have physical locations to make/store
materials
It is often argued that terrorists may have safe havens, but will
still lack a physical infrastructure to develop CBW. Also, it has been
assumed that it will be virtually impossible to detect terrorists
hunkering down in caves and basements and working on CB agents.
However, an often overlooked point is that terrorist groups can and
have actually possessed recognizable (and targetable) CBW facilities.
While this possibility is not a new concern, the extent of it occurring
and its implications may not be fully recognized.
The US government has viewed the subject of terrorist facilities
with concern, but little public discussion has developed about
terrorists having CBW facilities within their safe havens as well as
within established western states. An early, but well publicized,
example was the Clinton administration's controversial cruise missile
attack on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan on 20 August 1998.
It argued that the plant was linked to Bin Laden and that it was not a
pharmaceutical plant, but a chemical weapons manufacturing complex that
was engaged in the production of the nerve agent VX.
At the other extreme of public exposure are the facilities in the
former Yugoslavia. On 8 July 1999, the Italian newspaper Corriere della
Serra indicated that members of the World Islamic Front Against Jews
and Crusaders, which was founded by Bin Laden, had purchased three
chemical and biological agent production facilities in the former
Yugoslavia in early May 1998. According to the article, one such
facility was erected in the Bosnian village of Zenica. The report also
stated that another factory was built near Kandahar, Afghanistan. There
was no open investigation or diplomacy, and certainly no cruise
missile, directed against these facilities at that time. Allegedly,
members of the World Islamic Front for Fighting Jews and Crusaders
hired Ukrainian scientists to manufacture unspecified poisons and train
Bin Laden's activists in the use of these substances as weapons. The
activists would be trained to insert the chemical agents and toxins
into explosive devices. Bin Laden planned to send the chemically-
trained warriors back to their home countries or to cells in Europe.
\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ James Bennet, ``U.S. Fury on 2 Continents: The Overview; U.S.
Cruise Missiles Strike Sudan and Afghan Targets,'' The New York Times
(21 August 1998): A1.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
During the war in Afghanistan, US intelligence officials pinpointed
two sites that may have been used by al-Qa'ida to produce chemical
weapons. The United States believes cyanide was produced at a crude
chemical facility in the small village of Derunta (Darunta), near the
city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan.\22\ The secret laboratory
contained bottles of cyanide poison and bomb instruction manuals, and
was allegedly run by a man named Abu Khabab.\23\ A fertilizer plant in
the northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif is also suspected of playing a role
in possible chemical weapons production. \24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\22\ ``Chem-War sites found,'' Toronto Sun (11 November 2001); 2.
\23\ ``War in Afghanistan: lnside Bin Laden's chemical bunker,''
The Guardian (London) (17 November 2001); 3.
\24\ Ibid.
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Beyond al-Qa'ida there is Aum Shinrikyo, who, through substantial
contributions from wealthy members, purchased a wide variety of
businesses and facilities including a medical clinic, computer stores,
and trading companies. Also, the cult purchased land in Japan, on which
they built a compound where they were able to pursue research and
development of various dangerous and potentially lethal materials.
Using its businesses as a front, the cult could claim some legitimacy
for its pursuit of certain chemicals and technology. Although most of
the chemicals were obtained from within Japan, Aum purchased some
materials from the United States and attempted to buy weapons and
technology from Russia. In addition, the cult bought a ranch in a
remote area of Australia to carry out testing of nerve agents.
As all these cases demonstrate, terrorists have had access to or
possession of facilities. Some of these may even be located outside of
safe havens and may appear legitimate, making the task of detecting and
identifying them accurately much more difficult.
Assumption: A certain set of CB agents, such as VX, sarin, anthrax, and
smallpox, are the most likely CBW agents to he used
Cyanide is a chemical that has sometimes been overlooked as a
weapon in favor of more lethal and ``glamorous'' chemical agents like
sarin and VX. Yet the wide availability of various cyanide containing
compounds, which are widely used in industrial processes, make cyanide
(either in the form of hydrogen cyanide gas or as a solid or liquid
contaminant) one of the more likely WMD agents that can be used to
attack localized targets.
The WMD Terrorism Database of the Center for Nonproliferation
Studies at the Monterey Institute records 52 possessions, plots or uses
involving cyanide by terrorists. These cases have so far collectively
resulted in only 124 injuries and 13 fatalities, but the danger lies
more in the intent of the perpetrators than their results, as sooner or
later some group or individual will overcome the technical hurdles
associated with conducting an effective cyanide attack.
In addition to consumer products periodically being contaminated
with cyanide (the Tylenol and Chilean grape scares in the 1980s are
well-known), cyanide has been extensively used by a variety of
terrorist groups. The LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) have
allegedly used cyanide on several occasions against Sri Lankan
government troops and in 1999 Kashmiri separatists were found in
possession of at least 3 kilograms of cyanide which was to be used to
poison water tanks used by the Indian army. Right-wing groups have also
shown a particular interest in cyanide. In both 1985 \25\ and 1998,
\26\ domestic right-wing terrorist groups plotted to inflict large
numbers of casualties by poisoning the water supplies of major American
cities with cyanide; in 1993, the AWB, a South African right-wing
group, planned a similar action in order to disrupt the country's first
multi-racial election; and in 1988, a group calling itself the
Confederate Hammerskins formulated a plan to pump cyanide gas into the
ventilation system of a synagogue in Dallas, Texas. Aum Shinrikyo, the
Japanese doomsday cult, tried on three occasions in 1995 to employ
binary weapons that were designed to release hydrogen cyanide gas but
failed either because they were detected in time or did not operate
properly.\27\ The arrest in Chicago in early March of a man found to be
storing significant amounts of potassium and sodium cyanide in subway
tunnels highlights the ease with which even lone individuals can
acquire this poison.
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\25\ The Covenant, the Sword, and The Arm of The Lord was found in
possession of a drum of potassium cyanide, which was to be used to
poison the water systems in New York, Chicago and Washington, believing
that God would ensure that no Aryans would be killed.--Stern J. ``The
Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord'' in Tucker, J. (ed.)
Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological
Weapons, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. (2000), p. 151.
\26\ During court proceedings in 1998, it was revealed that members
of a white supremacist group calling itself ``The New Order'' proposed
the use of a 50-gallon drum of cyanide to poison the water supplies of
major cities. ``Supremacists had hit list, FBI agent says,'' The New
York Times (7 March 1998): A14.
\27\ Database cases 210, 213, 216.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even the United States' current terrorist nemesis, al-Qa'ida, has
shown an interest in cyanide as a weapon. Ahmed Ressam, the terrorist
convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport during
the millennium celebrations, claimed that in 1998, while in an al-
Qa'ida camp in Afghanistan, he had been trained how to kill people with
cyanide.\28\ Mr. Ressam stated that he was trained to poison
individuals by smearing an oily mixture of cyanide and other toxic
substances on door handles. His terrorist masters also taught him how
to introduce cyanide gas into public ventilation systems in order to
affect the maximum number of victims, while minimizing the risk to the
perpetrator.\29\ The February 2002 arrest in Rome of nine Moroccans
with potential links to al-Qa'ida for allegedly planning to poison the
water supply of the US Embassy using potassium ferrocyanide shows that
al-Qa'ida's interest in cyanide is hardly waning.\30\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\28\ Steven Grey, Dipesh Gadher, and Joe Lauria, ``What bin Laden
taught Ressam: From gruesome experiments with poison gas to the art of
bombmaking,'' The Ottawa Citizen (7 October 2001): A1.
\29\ Steven Edwards, ``Ressam Eyed Canadian Targets,'' National
Post Online (6 July 2001); Intenet, available from [http://
www.nationalpostonline.com], accessed on 7/12/01; and Laura Mansnerus,
``Testimony at Bombing Trial Outlines Recipe for Mayhem,'' New York
Times (6 July 2001): B2.
\30\ This form of cyanide is however only mildly toxic and would be
difficult to turn into an effective weapon.
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Assumption: States won't provide terrorists with CBW
Compounding the threat to US national security is the possibility
that states with CBW programs or related dual-use technologies could
provide sub-national actors with these deadly tools. The issue of state
sponsorship of terrorism has been a problem commonly associated with
rogue states in the Middle East. States such as Iran, Iraq, Libya,
Syria, and Sudan have been linked to numerous terror organizations,
providing them with a wide variety of assistance, including financial
support, weapons and other equipment and materials, and even
specialized training bases. Even though there has been little evidence
to indicate that any of these states have transferred CBW material,
technology or know-how to such terrorist organizations, the possibility
cannot be ruled out. The more states that proliferate and pursue
chemical and biological weapons programs, the greater the possibility
that sub-national actors will acquire them, either from direct
assistance or through other covert means, including theft.
Many of the same states identified as terrorist sponsors are also
those accused of attempting to acquire CBW capabilities. Under certain
circumstances the leaders of these countries may decide the only
practical utility they can derive from their CBW arsenals is by
deploying them covertly, using sub-national actors as means of
delivery.
Even if a state may not be willing to transfer CBW related
technologies to a sub-national actor, one cannot discount the
possibility of rogue elements within a government--such as an extremist
clique within the Iranian intelligence apparatus--being prepared to
take more risks than the Government as a whole. Within national CBW
programs, disgruntled or underpaid scientists, or individuals
sympathetic to terrorist causes may also be willing to illicitly
transfer CBW related technologies and know-how to terrorist groups. in
summary, the threat that a state actor may indirectly or directly
transfer CBW related technologies, equipment and scientific know-how to
a sub-national actor is a threat the US government cannot ignore.
Assumption: Terrorists won't use CBW except in extreme cases
With the exception of the terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo, the long
held assumption has been that sub-national groups and terrorists will
not use CBW except as a last resort. Many state players perceive a
threshold created by international norms that prevents them from openly
using CBW. However, non-state players, especially terrorists, do not
act under the same restraints as sovereign states. It is possible that
these organizations do not perceive such a threshold. Moreover, their
assessment of the costs and benefits of using CBW cannot be measured on
the same scale as that of nations. Terrorist organizations and
religious fanatical groups are not under the same political
restrictions as sovereign states. In fact, if the motivation of an
organization is to infuse terror, then use of CBW even on a small
scale, might be seen as furthering their cause. Omar Bakri Mohammed, an
Islamic cleric with ties to Islamic Jihad (and Hamas), advocated the
use of biological weapons against ``western'' forces, saying ``if any
Muslims are under occupation by a western force, they can use any
weapon to survive and that includes biological weapons.'' \31\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\31\ ``Refugee Calls for Biological Weapons Against the West,''
Metro (London), 6 September 1999.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The disparity between Israeli and Palestinian forces may lead to
the use of CBW in an effort to balance the scales. This thought was
expressed in the Palestinian weekly Al-Manar:
While the human-bombs [meaning, suicide bombers] may be
followed [and maybe stopped by] preventive measures . . .
serious thinking has begun for a while about developing a
Palestinian weapon of deterrence. This weapon terrifies the
Israeli security apparatuses, from time to time, mainly because
obtaining its primary components, whether biological or
chemical, is possible without too much effort, let alone the
fact that there are hundreds of experts who are capable of
handling them and use them as weapons of deterrence, thus
creating a balance of horror in the equation of the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict. A few bombs or death-carrying
devices will be enough, once they are deployed in secluded
areas and directed at the Israeli water resources or the
Israeli beaches, let alone the markets and the residential
centers. [This will be carried out] without explosions, noise,
blood, or pictures that are used to serve the Israeli
propaganda. Anyone who is capable, with complete self-control,
of turning his body into shrapnel and scattered organs, is also
capable of carrying a small device that cannot be traced and
throw it in the targeted location.\32\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\32\ Taufiq Abu-Khosa, ``Will We Reach the Option of Biological
Deterrence?'' Al-Manar. An
excerpted translation can be found on the Middle East Media Research
Institute website at:
[http://www.memri.org/sd/SP25501.html].
Thus, an asymmetric conflict, even where the imbalance is not so
great, can be used as justification for turning to CBW. it would be
folly not to recognize and respond to all the trends pointing to the
CBW option as one increasingly attractive to terrorists.
Assumption: US must focus efforts on homeland security and defense
While this assumption is not wrong, it may lead to neglecting other
venues in which US interests or allies are at risk. A good case in
point is US Central Command in the Middle East. It is very much at risk
given its location in the heart of some of the most anti-American
groups. It would be a mistake to pour so much into enhancing US
domestic security when equal attention should be given to those
Americans mobilized and deployed to protect us. In addition, planning
for responding to CBW terrorism must consider providing assistance to
allies. What if Italy is the site of a smallpox attack--we had better
have planned some way to have adequate resources available to contain
the consequences of such an attack. This means having vaccine available
in some international organization or stockpile above and beyond what
is needed for the US population.
recommendations
We have to be prepared to respond to chem-bio events and to do
everything we can to prevent them from ever occurring. But, that will
require new ways of approaching old, evolving, and emerging perils.
First, what is required is innovative thinking and a re-
conceptualization of threats in the 21st century. In past years, when
terrorists were unlikely to have the capability to cause or even seek
mass casualties, US foreign policy could focus on the more critical and
traditional problem of state threats. Even in the aftermath of the
collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent re-making of the world
order, it was clear who the enemies were (Iraq, North Korea), and these
enemies were defined not only by their antagonism towards the United
States and its values, but also by the fact that they were seeking
weapons of mass destruction.
Addressing even the ``old'' threats will require more than just
military power. It requires a long-term dedication to a multi-
dimensional and multi-faceted approach that seeks to prevent WMD
acquisition and use, strengthens anti-proliferation norms, develops
adequate defenses here and elsewhere, and prepares for effective
consequent mitigation and management in the advent of a WMD attack.
Specifically, this means not only putting significant money into US
military and intelligence capabilities, but also into international
organizations and collaborations. It involves finding ways to bridge
gaps within the US government as well as between states, communities,
and even tribes. It also means forging new partnerships and helping to
build trust and cooperation in areas where these have been scarce
commodities.
Second, the United States, while recognizing the ongoing threat
from proliferant states, also faces a threat from a new type of
terrorist. The US appears to be approaching the problem of mass-
casualty transnational terrorism, and the possibility of terrorist use
of WMD, in a manner consistent with deeply entrenched Cold War
assumptions about warfare and deterrence. The terrorists of today do
not, by and large, behave like states, nor are they part of the
international ``system.'' Addressing those terrorists who seek and
obtain WMD will require much of the same effort that has been expended
on states in the past, plus a strategy that addresses the root causes
and nature of terrorism. Long-term approaches that go beyond the next
election must be incorporated into the national counterterrorism
strategy. These approaches include investing in states that are in
danger of collapse in order to prevent the spiral into statelessness
that creates a haven for terrorism; involving allies and partners in
regional confidence-building measures that are designed to validate US
policy to the publics of other nations rather than just the
governments; and creating an international safety net to ensure that
the rule of law and social infrastructures remain intact even through
conflict.
What are some of the more specific activities that might need to be
pursued? The following six areas of effort emerge as critical if the
United States is to be successful in its war on terrorism and WMD
proliferation:
enhancing global WMD materials protection, control and
accounting;
supporting displaced WMD scientists and technical experts to
keep them employed doing constructive, socially beneficial
projects;
enhancing intelligence collection, analysis, coordination,
and cooperation;
strengthening the public health sector within the United
States and internationally;
renewing international commitment to effective
implementation of both the CWC and BWC; and
making meaningful investments to address underlying causes
of terrorism, such as poverty, illiteracy, and socio-economic
inequities.
Enhancing global WMD materials protection, control and accounting
(MPC&A)
The United States must continue its support of improved MPC&A
procedures in the FSU and expand these activities to include sensitive
chem-bio materials and to be international in scope. Although the
United States has supported numerous activities within the former
Soviet Union to enhance nuclear weapons and nuclear materials
protection, control and accounting since the end of the Cold War, these
efforts have not really addressed similar problems with chem-bio
materials either in the former Soviet Union or elsewhere in the world.
Chemicals of concern are controlled to some degree under the CWC and
the Australia Group which provide a normative and international
framework for national and international regulation. However, nothing
similar exists for dangerous biological materials and this gap deserves
greater attention.
The BWC does prohibit the transfer of toxins, agents, weapons,
equipment, or means of delivery prohibited under the treaty to any
other state, group of states, or international organization. However,
this prohibition is limited in several ways: it does not address the
concern we now face with terrorists, nor is there any implementing
mechanism, nor does it directly address the problem of security and
safety of materials while being transferred, stored, or used.
Consequently, there is a missing link in our efforts to contain the
threat from dangerous pathogens, one that must be dealt with on both
the national and international levels.
The anthrax incidents of this past fall and the ensuing
investigation clearly indicates that the United States does not have
good control over the collection of pathogens within US territory. When
one looks beyond the United States, the situation is even more
disconcerting. While the World Federation for Culture Collections is an
association of 472 repositories of living microbial specimens in 61
countries, it lacks any ability to require of its members tight
controls on access to these materials, nor can it force compliance on
the membership. Also, the WFCC has as members only a small portion
(less than 1/3) of the 1500 germ banks worldwide. In evaluating the
security and protection globally of these dangerous materials, it is
quite apparent that without much trouble terrorists could easily steal
or buy them illicitly. Thus, although the United States needs tighter
regulations, such an effort will have little meaning unless there is a
similar international initiative. The United States and its allies must
make it a priority to fill this security gap by pursuing vigorously
enhanced national regulations that control and secure deadly pathogens
and toxins and by launching the negotiation of a new ``Biosecurity
Convention.''
Such a Convention would compliment the BWC by developing a set of
specific, concrete regulations and activities that guarantee the
control, accounting, safety, and security of dangerous pathogens and
toxins. It would include, at a minimum, the following four components:
(1) a legal commitment by the contracting parties; (2) agreed
principles for developing progressively higher standards with respect
to regulation and licensing of microbial culture collections; (3)
mechanisms for oversight and their progressive refinement; and (4)
compliance and enforcement measures. To initiate this process, the
United States should work with Europe, Japan, and other like-minded
states to develop the national legislation needed to prevent misuse and
unauthorized access to dangerous biological agents and toxins. Using
these efforts as models, the United States must lead the effort on an
international level and with industry and academia to define
international standards of safety and security in the biotechnology
sector so that we have more control over where materials of concern
are, who has access to them, how they are controlled, and how they are
stored and transferred. By engaging the international community in the
negotiation of a Biosecurity Convention, the United States will be
pursuing an activity that will reduce the access to dangerous pathogens
and thus reduce the threat of biological weapons proliferation and
terrorism.
Supporting displaced WMD scientists and technical experts to keep them
employed and engaged in constructive projects and careers
A critical aspect of any state or terrorist group effort to acquire
and use CBW is having sufficient technical expertise to develop an
effective weapon. As indicated earlier in this testimony, several
states have had CBW programs that no longer exist and the personnel
from these programs (perhaps numbering in the thousands) may be without
jobs or at least without adequate wages. This workforce issue should
not be seen as involving only the FSU, but must address similar
concerns that exist for South African and Yugoslavian former bio-
weaponeers.
While the United States through the Cooperative Threat Reduction
program and a few other initiatives has tried to address these ``brain
drain'' concerns in the FSU, the amount of effort directed towards
former CBW personnel has been insufficient. A revitalized and focused
commitment to working with Russia and the other relevant states of the
FSU to provide adequate jobs, wages, and living conditions to these
experts must be immediately pursued. In addition, collaborative
discussions and programs should be pursued to address conditions in
other countries. Finally, ethics courses should be developed and
provided to those entering chemistry or biology fields to put their
eventual work and careers into a broader societal framework. Without a
much greater level of attention being given to workforce component of
the threat, we will live in a continued state of fear that these
experts may be lured into working for states or sub-national groups
with malicious intentions or may find themselves disgruntled enough to
act alone using their expertise for disastrous results.
Enhancing intelligence collection, analysis, coordination, and
cooperation
The issue of improving the capacity and capabilities of the US
intelligence community has been discussed in great detail in other
contexts, but two points deserve mention. First, while there have been
numerous studies, commission reports, and meetings concluding that the
intelligence community needs to integrate much more effectively open
source information, in reality this has not been done to the degree
needed. In part this is because of a mind set which constrains analysts
from seeing the value in non-classified information; in part it is
because there are few analysts that have the language and area studies
expertise to exploit adequately unique open source materials; and in
part it is because there is already too much classified information for
most analysts to try to wade through an additional stack of open source
materials on a regular basis.
The first recommendation is to develop incentives and
organizational structures that encourage and facilitate the use of open
source materials. The second suggestion is to hire more regional
experts and actively encourage the acquisition of such language and
area expertise with scholarships and funding for relevant educational
programs. Finally, information technology is making great strides in
being able to filter, bin, and even prioritize data, but the R&D
efforts in this area need to be better coordinated and grounded in
reality, i.e., analysts need to be integrated into these efforts at the
beginning, middle, and end of the activities so that they are given
tools that they are willing to use to become better analysts.
The second point has to do with improved cooperation and
coordination. Since September 11th, great strides appear to have been
made in inter-agency information sharing and collaboration. But, more
is necessary and more agencies have to be drawn into the circle. More
importantly, international collaboration must continue to be enhanced
and expanded as appropriate. Success in this area requires high-level
attention and leadership to overcome institutional practices, mistrusts
and rivalries.
Strengthening the public health sector within the United States and
internationally
My two recommendations in this area reiterate what others in
numerous meetings, hearings, and reports have indicated, namely that we
need to strengthen our own public health sector and that we need to
work with other international groups and foreign governments to do the
same internationally. Last fall's events were unnerving enough to get
much-needed political support and funding to strengthen domestic public
health preparedness by improving disease surveillance and monitoring,
communication networks, training, response capabilities, and laboratory
facilities. In addition, the proposed draft legislation of Senators
Biden and Helms called ``Global Disease Surveillance Act of 2002''
reflects the fact that given the speed of international travel,
migration patterns, and commercial transportation networks, it will not
be enough to shore up American public health capabilities and
capacities. We must assist others to develop capabilities for disease
monitoring, surveillance, and response or else leave ourselves
vulnerable to being affected unnecessarily to dangerous diseases
(whether intentional or not) that could be locally contained if
detected in a timely way. Having gotten more support today, the
challenge now is sustaining these efforts both in the United States and
elsewhere. Since these activities have dual benefits--enhancing
national and international security and public health, it is hoped that
their value will be clearly evident and funding will become an integral
and ongoing element of our national and public security systems.
Renewing international commitment to effective implementation of both
the CWC and BWC
Over the last decade, the United States and the UN Security Council
have claimed rhetorically that terrorism and the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction are the greatest threats to US and
international security. Whether it is the inability of the UN Security
Council to address effectively the problems of Iraq's unresolved WMD
capabilities, or the unwillingness of Russia and China to make fully
transparent their past CBW activities, states in general have not
recognized their own need for compliance, nor the need to enforce
compliance standards on others. The regime appears threatened by a
degradation in effectiveness that may paradoxically lead to what it was
developed to prevent--weapons proliferation, growing security threats,
and an increased likelihood of violent, wrenching conflicts. We are at
a critical juncture as far as it concerns proliferation-related
security threats, a time in history when muddling and making political
deals may no longer be sufficient, when difficult choices must be made
and sacrifices endured to reach the next level of national as well as
international security and stability.
But looking at the record of the last five years does not bode well
for the next ten years. The actions of too many states call into
question the long term commitment to anti-terrorism and
nonproliferation goals: the rhetoric appears hollow, the commitment to
effective action inadequate to the task. It will require US leadership
to move forcefully forward, leadership that involves working within the
CWC and BWC contexts to ensure compliance, secure access to sensitive
and dangerous materials, and to strengthen the international norms. It
will require the United States and others to provide substantial new
funding and support to these efforts, to focus on the international
benefits rather than national demands involved, and to take a long term
rather than short term approach to these problems. What can not happen
is ``business as usual.'' While terrorism and proliferation may not be
an issue in all parts of the world, it remains a substantial threat in
several regions and is capable of acting as a catalyst to other states
and subnational groups who might rethink their own decisions not to
acquire or use weapons of mass destruction.
Making meaningful investments to address underlying causes of
terrorism, such as poverty, illiteracy, or socio-economic
inequities
The United States must realize that problems such as failing
states, decades of unresolved, bitter conflict, or poverty and socio-
economic inequalities provide the breeding ground for angry, alienated
individuals and groups. With little to lose and perhaps much to gain in
terms of spiritual or political legacies, these individuals develop
values and moral frameworks that justify violence and possibly mass
destruction. If we ignore their efforts to address their grievances, we
risk always being the target, always being hated, and always failing to
move our own community and the international community to greater
stability and security. Simply put, this recommendation requires a long
term commitment to making the world a better place for all, which does
not mean that we should impose our way of life on others or accept
theirs. It does mean that we remain an active, constructive player in
multilateral affairs, that we try to improve the quality of life for
everyone, that we help in whatever ways possible to resolve ongoing
conflicts, and that in all of this we act generously and with humility.
While it may not be possible to respect the success of the Marshall
Plan in Europe, it may be worth the effort to try to find a new version
appropriate for areas such as Afghanistan, Somalia, or even the Middle
East.
The Chairman. Thank you, Doctor.
Doctor Zelicoff.
STATEMENT OF ALAN P. ZELICOFF, SENIOR SCIENTIST, SANDIA
NATIONAL LABORATORIES
Dr. Zelicoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a high honor
to be asked to testify in front of you today. I've followed the
committee's work for many years and I never really thought I'd
have the opportunity to be sitting in this seat testifying in
front of you and also in such esteemed company.
At the same time, I know that I'm charged with profound
responsibility to clearly address the role of foreign policy in
strengthening our national security posture with regard to bio-
terrorism. My testimony will be based on my very best
scientific assessment of the technologies currently available
and unfortunately also on my admittedly limited understanding
of the complexities of international relations.
Nonetheless, I believe there are shared interests among
countries, I call it an enlightened self interest, that make
possible an immediate and substantive improvement in our
counterterrorism strategy. Mr. Chairman, I develop technology
that I believe assists the medical and public health community
in identifying disease outbreaks natural or otherwise with more
data utility than we currently have and in a much shorter time
frame than exists in the existing surveillance system.
We are in fact testing that technology in the United States
and overseas. Interestingly I would note, that the
contributions of our Russian colleagues has much to everyone's
surprise been profoundly important in fostering and improving
these novel approaches. My message today to the committee is a
simple one.
The Chairman. Substantively, Doctor, you mean you're
surprised that they have attempted to cooperate or that they
have made such a contribution?
Dr. Zelicoff. Substantively, sir.
The Chairman. Scientifically?
Dr. Zelicoff. Indeed.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. Zelicoff. My message to the committee is a simple one.
We must rethink our approach to the unique challenges of bio-
terrorism. The standard tools of intelligence and of
international diplomacy function very poorly in this arena. I'm
no expert in gathering intelligence, but I am a daily consumer
of it and the peculiar aspects of the bio-weapons craft, small
sites and absence of signatures, ubiquitous availability of
organisms make it awfully difficult for analysts to locate,
predict or anticipate an attack except in the most general of
terms.
Similarly, traditional arms control which includes
declarations, inspections, counting and compliance judgments
fall flat in adding any substantive strengthening of treaties
such as the Biological Weapons Convention. Quite to the
contrary in fact, U.S. tests of proposed verification measures
under the recently failed protocol for the BWC demonstrated
rather clearly that most measures were not merely worthless,
but actually worse than worthless. They provide data of such
ambiguity as to confuse rather than enlighten and undermine
rather than strengthen the confidence and compliance with the
convention.
I think that UNSCOM activities further underscored the
severe limits of intrusive on-site inspections in uncovering
even an enormous bio-weapons program in Iraq. Thus the
Administration was correct in my view to reject the BWC
monitoring protocol that was but a rehash of highly fallible
verification techniques.
But fortunately the news is not all bad here. I believe
that we can address many perhaps most of our counterterrorism
needs through shared interests in the international community
in disease monitoring, bio-security arrangements, as has
recently been mentioned and assistance, and at least among our
allies, collective preparedness against bio-terrorism.
The central and most substantive facet is an enhanced
disease surveillance system accomplished through an
inexpensive, international, secure Internet-based system that's
located in primary care physicians' offices and clinics and
some hospital emergency wards and an analogous system in the
veterinary community.
In almost any scenario involving the use of a bio-weapon,
we have the ability to prevent illness and death in all but a
small fraction of those infected if and only if we have early
warning that epidemic is brewing. Hours matter here. Were there
to be let us say dissemination of a few pounds of anthrax from
an aerosol device in downtown Washington, tens of thousands of
people would become expose to anthrax spores. Most would become
ill and most of those would die unless we learned early on of
the increase in systems distributed in an oddly shaped area.
So how might this realization come to pass? Well, think
about the scenario that I just outlined. A terrorist drives a
van down Pennsylvania Avenue at about 8:00 on a Monday morning
dispersing an unnoticeable stream of anthrax spores out the
tailpipe. Initially nothing happens. People go about their
daily activities despite having thousands of anthrax spores in
their respiratory systems. By Wednesday morning or early
afternoon, due to differences in the dose they received and
also the normal biologic variability in the population, a few
percent of those exposed, and by the way a few animals as well,
will start to get ill with a cough, a fever and lethargy.
What is the likelihood that any of these 100 or 200 people
end up seeing the same physician? Well, it's about zero. So 100
or 200 doctors see what appears to be a bad case of flu, shrug
their shoulders and draw no systematic lesson.
But let's say that a few of those doctors have at their
fingertips an always available easy to use reporting system
that demands little of their time and more to the point,
doesn't even demand a specific diagnosis. Instead, the system
allows physicians to enter some symptoms as I'll illustrate
here.
At the same time as the physicians enter these symptoms, a
map will display the existence of the onset of a disease in the
local area. Here's an illustration for example, in New Mexico
of what this system actually looks like, but I'll use
Washington and we'll just zoom in on it to illustrate what I'm
talking about. What I'm showing is a zoomable map of the
Washington, D.C. area on which physicians and public health
authorities can overlay transportation infrastructure, weather,
local vegetation coverage, airports, even per capita income to
see if the diseases that are being seen are associated with
movement of people, might be socioeconomically related.
The Chairman. How do the diseases get hooked into that?
Dr. Zelicoff. On this screen that you see here, the
physician merely logs in on a touch screen. I'm not sure why
your screen's not updating and then within about 30 seconds,
can literally enter all of the data that is required. So we're
looking at only about a minute of the physician's time.
The public health officials who are also watching this
system while not seeing any patients, notice on the map that
there's a sudden increase in in this case a flu-like illness in
the Capital area. So they call some of the doctors and perhaps
learn that some of the chest x-rays on a few of these patients
demonstrated a peculiar finding that's not really well-
recognized by physicians, but is well known to the public
health officials as being strongly associated with anthrax.
An investigation would then immediately ensue rather than
five days later when the first deaths would occur and targeted
antibiotic therapy could be given. A specific diagnosis would
be available in 18 hours rather than five or six days later.
But today and let me make this very clear, it's unlikely that
local public health officials who are the true experts in
infectious disease in their community would know much of
anything about severe symptoms in the population until the
hospitals were overwhelmed with cases or autopsies revealed the
diagnosis in droves.
It would be too late at that point to save the vast
majority of people. The reason for all of this is that our
current disease reporting system is stuck in the 19th century.
It's paper-based, it's disease specific and it's so time
consuming as to frustrate even the most well-intentioned of
physicians who serve as the true sensors for illness in the
community.
I observe this in my practice. Not once in 10 years of
practice did I never see a physician report a disease that they
were even legally mandated to report by local, state
authorities. But there is another way.
In my 10 years of medical practice, not once and I mean
never did I see any physician ever pick up the phone, file the
fax, fill out the form that is required to report a reportable
disease. Now occasionally it does happen, but it is merely a
matter of chance and the vast majority of reporting the public
health officials have comes not from doctors who are seeing the
patients first, but from laboratories.
That would of course assume that a sample was obtained, not
a very good assumption in the current economic environment, the
sample was handled correctly and that the result was available
in a timely fashion.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. Zelicoff. All of those would be very, very bad
assumptions on which to base a disease-based surveillance
system. In New Mexico and in collaboration with the New Mexico
Department of Health, we developed this system that I'm
illustrating here which has been in use by 50 physicians for
about six months. It's called the Rapid Syndrome Validation
Project or RSVP for short.
What we've learned is that physicians actually do take the
time, about a minute, out of their busy schedules to consult
the system on a daily basis to see what's going on. In other
words, to get the epidemiologic or public health lay of the
land, and further, that they actually report because they know
that they will get an advisory message from the local public
health authorities who are watching the data on a near real
time basis.
The cost is very inexpensive. It's the cost of the
computer, a touch screen and a low speed Internet connection.
All of which are ubiquitously available, including in most of
the developing world.
The physicians indeed are delighted to have the
information. They return the favor by entering suspiciously ill
patients and are very, very good at sensing when something is
amiss. While the doctor is not necessarily good at making the
exact diagnosis of what is wrong when he first sees somebody,
she's very, very good at knowing whether or not someone is ill.
I think we've been successful in this approach as the
government of Singapore, at least one NATO country and several
other public health, state public health authorities around the
country have asked for RSVP to be implemented and we are in the
process of implementing it in those places now.
Mr. Chairman, when all is said and done would be
perpetrators of bio-terror know that the effects of their
attacks would be blunted if not eliminated, they might well
rethink their strategy of using bio-weapons in the first place.
A multinational cadre of clinicians and nurses exchanging
up to the minute information, not delayed by laboratory tests,
not delayed by the current existing bureaucracy of reporting is
our single best defense and we have the resources now to so
equip them both nationally and internationally. All that is
required is a policy shift emphasizing and strengthening this
linchpin capability.
So I'm looking forward to your insightful questions. I
expect that I'll learn much more from you than I've imparted
and I apologize for the technical glitch. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Zelicoff follows:]
Prepared Statement of Alan P. Zelicoff
Mr. Chairman and Members of the committee:
It is a high honor to be asked to testify in front of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee. I have followed committee's work for many
years, and never thought I'd have the privilege of sitting before you
and in such esteemed company. At the same time, I know that I am
charged with a profound responsibility: to clearly address the role of
foreign policy in strengthening our national security posture with
regard to bio-terrorism. My testimony is based on my very best
scientific assessment of the technologies currently available, and my
admittedly limited understanding of the complexities of international
relations. Nonetheless, I believe that there are shared interests among
countries--call it enlightened self-interest--that make possible an
immediate substantive improvement in our counter-terrorism strategy.
Mr. Chairman, my formal scientific training is in experimental
physics and medicine. I was a practicing internist and immunologist for
about 10 years before joining the technical staff at Sandia National
Laboratories in the Center for National Security and Arms Control where
I am now senior scientist. I work at the interface between politics and
technology. I served as technical adviser on the U.S. Delegation to the
Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) throughout the 1990s, including the
time of the intensive negotiations on a Protocol to strengthen
compliance with the treaty. I carry out large scale collaborative
research projects in disease outbreak identification with colleagues
throughout the Russian biological weapons laboratory system in an
effort to better understand that mysterious archipelago of research
sites, some or even most of which undoubtedly involved in illegal
weapons development throughout the much of the past 30 years. I also
develop technology that I believe assists the medical and public health
community in identifying disease outbreaks--natural or otherwise--with
more day to day utility and in a much shorter time frame than the
existing surveillance system. We are testing that technology in the
United States and overseas. Interestingly, the contributions of our
Russian colleagues has, much to everyone's surprise, been profoundly
important in fostering and improving these novel approaches.
My message to the committee is a simple one: we must rethink our
approach to the unique challenges of bio-terrorism. The standard tools
intelligence and of international diplomacy function poorly in this
arena. I am no expert on gathering intelligence, but I am a daily
consumer of it, and I believe that peculiar aspects of the bio-weapons
craft--small sites, an absence of signatures, ubiquitous availability
of organisms--make it awfully difficult for analysts to locate, predict
or anticipate an attack except in the most general of terms; the
``take'' of intelligence is, regrettably, disappointing. Similarly,
traditional arms control--declarations, inspection, counting, and
compliance judgments--fall flat in adding any substantive strengthening
of treaties such as the BWC; quite the contrary in fact, as US tests of
proposed verification measures under the recently failed Protocol for
the BWC demonstrated rather clearly that most measures were not merely
worthless, but actually worse than worthless. They provide data of such
ambiguity as to confuse rather than enlighten, and undermine rather
than strengthen confidence in compliance with the Convention. UNSCOM
activities further underscored the severe limits of intrusive on-site
inspections in uncovering even an enormous bioweapons program in Iraq.
Thus, the Administration was correct, in my view to reject the BWC
monitoring Protocol that was but a rehash of highly fallible
verification techniques.
Fortunately, the news here is not all bad. We can address many,
perhaps most of our counter-bioterrorism needs through shared interests
in the international community in disease-monitoring, biosecurity
arrangements and assistance, and at least among our allies, collective
preparedness against bio-terrorism. The central and most substantive
facet is enhanced disease surveillance, accomplished through an
inexpensive, international, secure, Internet-based, system located in
primary care clinics and some hospital emergency wards, and an
analogous system in the veterinary community.
In almost any scenario involving the use of a bio-weapon, we have
the ability to prevent illness and death in all but a small fraction of
those infected, if--and only if--we have early warning that an epidemic
is brewing. Hours matter. Were there to be, let us say, a dissemination
of a few pounds of anthrax from an aerosol device in downtown
Washington, tens of thousands of people would be exposed to anthrax
spores. Most would become ill, and of those most would die unless we
learned early on of an increase in symptoms distributed in an oddly
shaped area.
How might this early realization come to pass? Think about the
scenario that I just outlined: a terrorist drives a van down
Pennsylvania Avenue at about 8 AM on a Monday morning, dispersing an
unnoticeable stream of anthrax spores out the tailpipe. Initially,
nothing happens. People go about their daily activities despite having
thousands of anthrax spores in their respiratory systems. By Wednesday
morning or early afternoon--due to differences in dose and biologic
variability in the population--a few percent of those exposed (and, by
the way, a few animals) start to get ill with a cough, fever, and
lethargy. What is the likelihood that any of the one or two hundred
people end up visiting the same doctor? It's about zero. So, one or two
hundred doctors see a single patient with what appears to be a bad case
of flu, shrug their shoulders and draw no systematic lesson.
But let's say a few of those doctors have, at their fingertips, an
always-available, easy to use reporting system that demands little of
their time and--more to the point--doesn't demand a specific diagnosis.
Instead the system allows the physician to report the symptoms of a
moderately to severely ill patient, and, at the same time, shows the
doctor and local public health authorities in the District all cases of
flu-like illness in the area, presented immediately and conveniently
enough on a map. The doctor notices that a few dozen physicians have
reported the same thing in just the past few hours. Public health
officials who, while not seeing patients are seeing the map on their
screens, and to them, the sudden spike in flu-like cases in Zip Code
20501 is unusual. They call some of the doctors, and perhaps learn that
the chest X-rays on a couple of the patients demonstrated a finding
whose significance was missed by the physicians who have never seen it
before, but well known to the public health officials, indicating that
these cases might well be anthrax. An investigation immediately ensues,
and the diagnosis is confirmed less than 18 hours later. The geographic
pattern of illness proves important, and via the media, everyone in the
area or a few miles downwind learns of the potential for exposure.
Targeted antibiotic therapy is given. A few hundred people die, but had
public health officials not suspected anthrax until a few days later,
many, many thousands would be dead.
Today, it is unlikely that local public health officials--the true
experts in infectious disease in their communities by dint of years of
experience and observation--would know much of anything about any
severe symptoms in the population until hospitals were overwhelmed with
cases or autopsies revealed the diagnosis in droves. By then, it would
be too late to save the vast majority of people succumbing to anthrax.
Our current disease reporting system is stuck in the 19th century--
paper based, disease specific, and so time-consuming as to frustrate
even the most well intentioned physicians who serve as the ``sensors''
for illness in the community. I observed this in my clinical practice:
never--not once--did I ever see a colleague report even diseases that
they are legally mandated report, let alone a ``suspicious'' or odd
case. But there is another way: in New Mexico, and in dose
collaboration with the NM Department of Health, Sandia has developed
and implemented a stable, physician-friendly surveillance system called
RSVP--the Rapid Syndrome Validation Project. We've had about 50 doctors
using the system over the past 6 months. Physicians actually take the
time out of their busy schedules to consult the system to ``see what is
going on'' in their communities; public health officials review the
data and update advisory messages on a near-real-time basis. The cost
is that of a computer, a touch screen, and a low-speed Internet
connection--maybe $5-6,000 per clinic serving 5 to 15 doctors. The
physicians are delighted to have the information, and return the favor
by entering suspiciously ill patients--and they're very good at sensing
when something is amiss. And public health officials can quickly
analyze the information with geographic tools that are part of the
software.
Have we been successful? Practitioners and local health officials
seem to think so. We've had requests from dozens of public health
jurisdictions around the US to participate in and use RSVP; about two
hundred more physicians are about to come onto the system. The
Government of Singapore is installing RSVP throughout that island-
nation, and other governments have requested the software as well. In
the end, the system works because it is in the enlightened self-
interest of doctors and epidemiologists to have it; sharing the data
makes it that much more valuable as diseases respect no borders. And,
this is a ``no regrets'' approach: even if there is never a
bioterrorism attack, the public health benefits will probably be quite
large--diagnosis and therapy will be much more accurate than in the
current clinical setting, even in the United States where sheer guess
work dominates the early treatment of most infectious disease.
Mr. Chairman, the traditional approaches to counter-proliferation
of bioweapons--more intelligence spending and arms control treaties--
are largely ineffective in this context. It is simply impossible to
detect and thwart all individuals or groups that are determined to use
an infectious organism or a toxin as a biological weapon of terror.
With the anthrax attacks of last year in the Hart building and
elsewhere, we now know that at least some terrorists have learned how
to prepare anthrax spores in a form that will disseminate easily
through the air. Please know this: the challenge to the terrorist never
has never been the ability to acquire anthrax spores in varieties that
are reproducibly lethal. Rather, the fundamental roadblock to the
effective use of bio-weapons was the ability to aerosolize it--that is,
to make anthrax particle behave like the air itself--infinitely
miscible, invisible and odorless. That this technology, formerly
understood by a rare breed of bio-weaponeer that could be found only in
the national biological weapons programs, is now in the hands of
terrorists is chilling. At the very least it means that future
biological weapons attacks are not only probable, but that they are
likely to be on a large scale. And, since it is extremely difficult to
locate seed stocks, fermenters, and drying equipment necessary to make
aerosolize-able anthrax--or, for that matter, infectious, aerosolize-
able organisms of many types--we will have to rely on early detection
of cases, in hun-tans and in animals, in order to mitigate the worst
consequences of a large-scale use of these kinds of bio-weapons. We
ignore these conclusions at our peril.
When all is said and done, should would-be perpetrators of bio-
terror know that the effects of their attacks would be blunted if not
eliminated, they might well rethink their strategy in the first place.
A multi-national cadre of clinicians and nurses, exchanging up-to-the-
minute information is our single best defense, and we have the
resource--now--to so equip them. All that is required is a policy shift
emphasizing and strengthening this lynchpin capability.
I am looking forward to the insightful questions of the committee.
I expect that I will learn from you much more than I impart.
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. I doubt that, Doctor. Not the technical
glitch, that you'll learn much more at least from me, but what
I'm going to do because there's only three of us here and my
colleagues--one advantage of being the Chairman is the hearing
doesn't start until you get there, but it also doesn't end
until you bang the gavel down which means I'm here until the
end. So I'd be delighted to yield to my colleagues first.
Senator Lugar. Well, I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman
for your thoughtfulness. Dr. Zelicoff, your presentation is
certainly helpful and gives an optimistic sense of, as you say,
how to brunt bio-terrorism, given gifted physicians and alert
public health professionals.
I just want to underline, without getting into an over-
examination of the whole situation, what we've lived through in
the wake of the anthrax attack upon Senator Daschle's office
and the Senate. The threat was real and the spores present were
a problem because people didn't know very much about it.
Dr. Frist fortunately knew a great deal and this was of
some comfort to receive some briefings on what was known and
what was not known. But what happened fairly quickly, just
following your analysis, was everybody went to room S. 216, had
a swab test, got three days of Cipro tablets while decisions
were made on what to do next.
Senate officials stopped the ventilation system quickly,
emptied the buildings, sealed off in a time warp all our
records, checkbooks, everything else here; and as a result,
probably a lot of lives were saved. Because people knew it was
anthrax, they were able to begin treating people who needed
treatment. That didn't happen at the Brentwood post office in
quite the same fashion; and therefore, as you pointed out, time
counts in these situations.
But for the first very public attack, the system responded,
because of the ingenuity of people. It was extremely costly;
and the taxpayers will be picking up the tab for some time,
while trying to figure out all of what happened here.
But in terms of loss of life, identification and accurate
diagnosis is imperative if somehow, somewhere in the system
somebody picks up a possible threat. Immediate treatment of
almost everybody in sight must occur; if so, there's a
reasonably good chance of blunting the attack.
This committee, and others, have held hearings exploring
the means of dissemination, such as helicopters, trucks, and
crop dusters. I agree that identification and response are
terribly important, and I'm hopeful this hearing will
illuminate these issues for a lot of people.
Dr. Zelicoff. Two comments if I may, Senator. First, you
had a particular advantage in the case of the anthrax letter in
Senator Daschle's office in that someone recognized there was
powder. Make no mistake, in a large scale bio-terrorism
dispersal, you will not have a powder to look at, raise a
suspicion, do early swabs and determine who needs to be treated
and who doesn't.
Second, even with that advantage, I would hardly call what
happened in Washington, D.C. a dramatic success. As a result of
a few people being exposed, five people dead, there were
several tens of thousands of people put on Ciprofloxacin for at
least a period of time. Not exactly our shining hour.
Dr. Ivan Wak, who I believe is the D.C. Public Health
Commissioner, at the time of the initial reports asked a
question that I think is truly enlightening here. He came out
and he specifically asked, tell me, who is it that I do not
need to worry about? And no one could give him an answer. Why?
Because we had no context, no surveillance system, for example,
to know who likely was not exposed.
In the case of a large scale attack where people start to
become ill, without this kind of geographic information which
is currently not available either to public health officials or
to clinicians, that would mean millions of people put on
antibiotics. Not only a logistical nightmare, but one that will
almost certainly result in untoward side effects that are very
unpleasant.
Senator Lugar. Good point. Mr. Moodie, let me just
express, first of all, a personal thanks to you for working
with House colleagues on the Nunn-Lugar chemical weapons
elimination project at Shchuchye. I want the public to know
that through your own quiet diplomacy and credibility you have
been most helpful with congressional movement in these
important areas.
You have raised a question, all of you have in one form or
another, of what an awesome job is still to be done with
cooperative Russians. As the Chairman has pointed out, this
situation is different than noncooperative Iraqis, but
nevertheless there is still much work to do to eliminate this
nightmare.
The detritus of the Cold War is a real threat, and it's
very expensive to clean up. We discuss the awesome power of
these weapons and we know that they're there and the question
is just physically is how to pay for it, how to organize the
disposal. What would be your advice to the Administration?
At best we're attacking the first of seven locations, the
other six are sitting there and hopefully will just sit there
for quite a while without deterioration or proliferation. What
is a reasonable international program and a dramatic way to
sort of get a handle on this while the world is interested in
bio-terrorism?
Mr. Moodie. Thank you very much, Senator, and thank you
for your comments. I do think the funding of the Shchuchye
facility is an extremely important step forward. It gets
activity going on the ground which we've talked about for a
decade or more and never saw happen and now finally, we're at
the point where some of the Russian stuff is actually going to
be destroyed. And that's enormously important and a positive
step.
I see a two pronged approach. One is encouraging the
Russians to do more themselves. This is their problem first and
foremost and yes, they have committed a significant increase in
money, but when you put it against the need, the $120 million a
year against the 6 or 8 or $10 billion program isn't a lot. And
I do think, despite the economic problems they have, there is
more money in the Russian system for this if they want to put
it against this rather than some other things and so I think
that we should engage with them on that. And by we, I mean in
this case the entire international community.
The second track I think is one--we have not pushed this
issue as a priority for the last several years in both
administrations it seems to me. And as a consequence, we
haven't pushed our friends and allies to do as much.
I know in the earlier discussion there was comments about
some of things that European allies are doing, the British, the
Germans, the Norwegians, but that really isn't a lot of money.
The European Union together 15 countries I think has committed
less than 20 million euros to this issue. That really isn't
adequate. Everybody has an interest in seeing the CW stockpile
of the Russians disappear.
It's closer to the Europeans than it is to us. It's closer
to Japan than it is to us. And I think what we need to do is
make a much more sustained concerted effort with our friends
and allies to join us. It probably will mean more money for us,
too, but I think if we show that we're willing to put more
money into it and we have a cooperative Russian government,
they should then be pushed. And I think the place to do this is
at the review conference that is scheduled for next year.
I think one objective we should have for that review
conference is a strategy that everybody agrees to about how to
get the Russians from where they are to where they have to be.
This is the single biggest noncompliance issue in the CWC. Not
because they're evil people in this case. It's just a huge
task.
But they're never going to get to the 2012 deadline and
that not only has negative implications for the issue itself,
but it has severely negative implications for the health of the
treaty, too. For both of those reasons, we've got to work with
friends and allies to get them to kick in more money.
Senator Lugar. I think that's a tremendously important
suggestion that the conference offers a focal point. For
example, in the discussion of the future of NATO, we're all
focusing on Prague and the membership question, the Russian
relationship, the war against terrorism, but there's a run up
now in this committee with the Administration. We're all
talking an agenda that is critically important to achieve.
I haven't heard of anybody working on an agenda for this
conference. As you pointed out, the conference provides an
opportunity for an international wake up call. All the major
parties are going to be there.
It's sort of like a giant pledging conference in an
international sense in which we all come to the table to see
what is attainable. We need to capitalize on cooperation and
expand on addressing these threats. Furthermore, Russia must
work with us to address noncooperation in other nations.
There is every reason to want to have an active diplomatic
run up to this conference. I appreciate that suggestion. It's
one we should follow-up on. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Frist. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Zelicoff, you
said that every moment counts. Why now do you believe that our
public health system and physicians are adequately trained
today to respond in such a way that is adequate?
Dr. Zelicoff. By and large my answer is yes. Physicians
are very good at recognizing when people are ill, they may not
be able to make the correct diagnosis and unlike most
physicians, the vast majority of public health officials around
the country have actually devoted time to understanding the
peculiarities of biological weapons diseases and I think know
the earliest indicators of them.
Senator Frist. And you think--I'm going to ask a whole
bunch of questions now.
Dr. Zelicoff. Sure.
Senator Frist. Do you think we're going to have a manpower
or personpower shortage in terms of trained epidemiologists and
people who are experts once you have the technology out there?
Dr. Zelicoff. Right. I know it's popular to say that we
don't have adequate manpower in epidemiology and I would be the
last person to question that. What I do think, though, is that
in a world of limited resources, when we're faced with a choice
between hiring more epidemiologists who have no data at their
fingertips versus providing the existing epidemiologists with
real time information on which to make decisions, I think the
choice is obvious. You go with the latter.
And make no mistake about it, right now epidemiologists
learn about disease outbreaks usually as a result of an
infection control nurse working in a hospital once enough cases
have accumulated or from a laboratory. That is inherently
delayed. The system is currently set up almost precisely to be
unresponsive enough in the setting of a bio-terrorism attack.
Senator Frist. If you took all of the public health
facilities in the Unites States of America, how many would have
the capability to fax, use a fax machine?
Dr. Zelicoff. It's a lot less than we might want to think.
It's probably about 50 or 60 percent are capable of faxing.
Senator Frist. Just fax machines?
Dr. Zelicoff. Yeah, just fax machines.
Senator Frist. Let's take it one step further. In terms of
the public health facilities, the first responders, the people
we will go to depend upon, obviously you're hitting at the
heart of it with your communication, how many have e-mail
capability of all the--and that's where we're going to go.
That's who we're going to call for early recognition. How many
even have e-mail?
Dr. Zelicoff. I don't know the numbers. What I do know----
Senator Frist. It's low.
Dr. Zelicoff [continuing].----what I do know is that in
order to provide that kind of capability that provides enough
data flow for a system like this one for example, is a low
speed Internet connection. We're talking about 50 bucks a month
and a computer.
Senator Frist. But it's not there and I haven't gotten
there yet.
Dr. Zelicoff. They do have phone lines, though. Let's be
clear about that.
Senator Frist. Most of them do have phone lines and
capabilities there. The point of the matter is that it is a
pencil and paper system and when every moment counts, it's
inexcusable today when you've got technology like you have that
we don't use blast fax machines which have been around a while,
we don't use the Internet, not using the e-mail, don't use
Internet, that infrastructure is not there.
I think you made the case and I agree 100 percent this is
where we need to be, but it's important for my colleagues to
know that the basic support, and it goes back to what Dr. Sands
said in one of her recommendations, the basic support for our
public health infrastructure we have been remiss.
We have undersupported so even when you introduce your
program to a community, they do have the telephone line coming
in, but they're not on the Internet and they need to be. And
what is hard, I believe, is for us to explain, and we all need
to do a better job to communities around the country, that the
first responders, the people we're depending upon if every
moment counts, to look at that pattern, to communicate from the
public health facility to the hospital to the CDC, it's just
not there.
It is going to require an increased investment to make your
sort of program available. Right now is this in community
health centers all across the state?
Dr. Zelicoff. It's in community health centers in southern
Texas and in southern New Mexico. Let me tell you why we picked
those community health centers. We tried to pick areas of our
part of the country that were most severely underfunded, most
severely taxed both in terms of their clinical physicians who
are seeing patients and also the public health authorities in
those areas and we were able to set this up painlessly even in
the poorest part of southern New Mexico and south central Texas
along the Mexican border.
So I think the message here is that while I quite agree
with you that more resources are needed, let's not make a
mountain out of a mole hill. The amount of money that's
necessary to accomplish this kind of connectivity which is an
80 percent solution, it's not a 100 percent solution, is
trivial. The amount of money that will be required to get the
last 10 or 20 percent is of course enormous.
Senator Frist. But what my colleagues need to understand,
the touch screen and the computers available are not in the
public health centers today.
Dr. Zelicoff. Correct.
Senator Frist. And I'm reinforcing what you're saying, but
my colleagues don't realize that when smallpox comes to a
community or anthrax is in the community here----
Dr. Zelicoff. Yes.
Senator Frist [continuing].----if you're a physician, you
haven't been trained to think anthrax, period. That pattern
recognition you need to report to somebody so the pattern can
be picked up and it becomes even more important--you said
anthrax easy. That's easy stuff. We knew the powder was here.
You could draw a perimeter around it. You could treat
everybody, but what about smallpox which can travel across the
country and as a physician if you've never--you're board
certified in internal medicine I see from you bio. Have you
seen active smallpox?
Dr. Zelicoff. No, I haven't even seen a case of measles
and I don't think I'd be able to make that diagnosis----
Senator Frist. No, you wouldn't, but a lot of children get
chicken pox----
Dr. Zelicoff. Right.
Senator Frist [continuing].----and if smallpox is in your
community, the doctors are going to see it and they've not been
trained----
Dr. Zelicoff. Correct.
Senator Frist [continuing].----to make that diagnosis.
Well, if you miss it and every moment does count, right now how
infective is smallpox right now? If I had smallpox sitting
around me right now to the left and right, people would be
infected after about an hour if I had lesions in my mouth. You
won't really understand how infective, communicable it actually
is.
I just think you presentation and then Dr. Sands, in your
testimony, you mention Italy in your written testimony. What if
Italy is a site of a small pox attack? We better be planned in
some way. Smallpox's germs know no boundaries. They don't care
if it's United States, Tennessee, California, New Mexico.
Smallpox travels and it travels on an airplane pretty easily
and it doesn't have to be at state.
That's why when I ask who has this smallpox--smallpox has
killed 500 million people. We've eradicated the disease, but
there are a bunch of people running around with the virus in
their pocket somewhere and from an intelligence standpoint, we
need to figure that out which comes into this whole panel in
terms of why we're discussing it.
But going from the front line, we're not trained to
recognize smallpox, we don't have the communication to address
the smallpox today, so we have a long, long, long way to go.
Dr. Zelicoff. Right, and let's also add with regard to
smallpox and I quite agree with you, it's a highly significant
problem that's overlooked because it almost falls into the too
hard to do category, that once we have our vaccine supply of
300 million doses, that will not be adequate to solve the
problem or address it.
Increasing work in genetic alteration of the organism may
in fact result in a vaccine resistant strain. We have to have
at least one other tool in our toolbox. There is a small
program being run at the CDC with folks from US AMRID to look
for antibiotics. They have succeeded in probably coming up with
an animal model.
That's an enormous breakthrough because for the first time,
we can now test other nontraditional means of treating the
disease not only if there's a vaccine resistant strain, but
more to the point for the 15 or 20 percent of the population
that cannot tolerate the existing vaccine for smallpox because
of other conditions.
Senator Frist. Good. Very well said. Mr. Chairman, I know
the time is late.
The Chairman. No, take your time.
Senator Frist. I think the real challenge that we need to
face and it's so important for this committee to hear this
because for the last four years, I've been sort of sitting and
listening and our intelligence which we heard from an earlier
panel a little bit today, has identified smallpox, anthrax,
botulinum toxin, plague, tularemia and the list are there and
they're identified, but some way or another our intelligence
community isn't filtering down to what you just heard.
Our vulnerabilities are high, they're huge. We can reduce
them by responding, but our intelligence community's already
identified these, but we're not communicating to the doctors,
to the public health communities, to the epidemiologists, to
the Appropriations Committee and now we find ourselves with
risk. Everybody said the risk is there, it's reality.
Go back to 1995 sarin gas attack, we go back to anthrax
right here where we are in New York City where it took six
days, the little skin lesion of anthrax took six days to
diagnose with the very best doctors, the very best CDC in the
world looking at it, it took six days to diagnose it. That's
not right today.
The risk we've heard today is there. The risk is
increasing. I think that's very important for us to know.
Because of technology, because of all the reasons Dr. Sands
outlined in her really great paper that she didn't have a
chance to go all the way through today and your annotation in
the paper, the risk is increasing today.
Dr. Zelicoff, you said it in your opening statement, the
vulnerabilities are high, but by reducing the vulnerabilities,
we end up reducing the risk. The terrorist wants to terrorize.
The terrorist is going to go where the vulnerabilities are high
and that's the significance I believe of all the
recommendations that are being made today. If we educate
people, Bob, if we respond as a government, if we integrate our
intelligence, we reduce the vulnerabilities and that reduces
the risk as we go forward.
I'll stop with that, Mr. Chairman. I just think it's
important, it's really come out in the panel and the earlier
panel, this integration, this matrix where we--I'm optimistic.
We can lick this thing, but it is going to take this
integration that's been demonstrated by the panel today.
Mr. Moodie. Mr. Chairman, may I make just one quick
comment on that.
The Chairman. Please.
Mr. Moodie. I think it's particularly important for this
committee with the mandate that it has. And that is that as
much as we do here at home, that's still not the end of the
story. Anthrax doesn't necessarily stop at our border. I think
it would be interesting for the committee to examine what other
countries are doing with respect to these kinds of issues.
Our institute has done a lot of work in the issue of
promoting cooperation in dealing with bio-terrorism
internationally. You see a very spotty picture among our
Europeans and elsewhere in terms of how serious they take the
threat, the kind of money they're putting against it, the kinds
of issues they're making, the kinds of medicines they're
producing. It's a very mixed picture, and yet we're all going
to have to be in this together. We can't do it by ourselves.
The Chairman. I think that's a valid point and it sure
makes you wish for the good old days of the Cold War, doesn't
it? You know, then everything was predictable. We knew that the
commissars were not likely to take great risks and they were
concerned about controlling all of their potential dangerous
substances and God, I never thought I'd look forward to
Communist Russia, the Soviet Union again.
By the way, all kidding aside, I think the greatest
frustration I've had as Chairman and Ranking Member of this
committee is again and I don't know how to say it, I say it ten
different ways, is getting to our colleagues and to the
administration, past and present.
I have an 86 year old dad who's very ill in the hospital
right now, and he is constantly reminding me of two things
about first things first and if all is equally important to
you, nothing's important to you. It's very hard to get, I think
you agree, Senator, get a handle on this and get our colleagues
paying attention to it, the administration paying attention.
I mean here we're talking about it again, I'm not
criticizing the $8.3 billion we're going to spend this year on
national defense. Great. Wonderful. But we're going to spend,
what's it up to, $200 million now that we're talking about
dealing or maybe $300 million dealing with the whole chemical
reduction problem. Dealing with stockpiles of chemical weapons
in, you know, in the former Soviet Union, particularly in
Russia.
I mean, it seems to me it's so out of whack what we're
doing. I mean, Doctor, I would be willing to bet you, on this I
may have some disagreement with my friend at least in tone with
my friend from Tennessee, if we could somehow get every single
state official and every single governor in one room at one
moment and give you an hour to lay out your presentation, they
could fund all by themselves in their states without a single
penny.
I mean if we can wire every single solitary classroom in
the state of Delaware, every single classroom from kindergarten
through high school is wired now to the Internet. Every singe
one in my small state. If we can do that, we can do this in a
heartbeat.
Dr. Zelicoff. Correct.
The Chairman. We can do this in a heartbeat. And so part
of this problem is getting out A, to the public and to put
pressure on our colleagues and to our colleagues how serious
this problem is and then beginning to move on it. I mean, I
can't understand why, to be very blunt with you, why every one
of our colleagues aren't here at this hearing.
I'm having trouble getting it and I've been here almost 30
years. Maybe that's why I'm having trouble getting it. But let
me point out one of my staff members, actually a fellow that
was the science counselor at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo here in
the room right now at the time of the sarin gas poisoning in
the Tokyo subway, he indicated that a doctor who had dealt with
a previously unsolved sarin attack outside of Tokyo faxed his
correct diagnosis based on the reports he had heard on the
radio and this was critical in saving lives and limiting the
deaths to 12 of the 1,000 people who were exposed.
And he said there's real live examples of what you're
talking about.
Dr. Zelicoff. Somebody's going to recognize it. That's
correct.
The Chairman. Real live examples of what you're talking
about. I'd like to pursue three things. One with you, Doctor.
You indicated the first 80 percent is easy, and the last 20
percent is incredibly expensive. Tell us about the last 20
percent. What does the last 20 percent consist of?
Dr. Zelicoff. From the standpoint of domestic
counterterrorism with biological weapons, it consists of sensor
development, consists of education and finally, it consists of
integrating a wide and disparate flow of data. Things like
pharmaceutical sales, absenteeism from major corporations or
from schools on a given day, et cetera. That's all going to be
much much harder to do.
The information sometimes is proprietary. More to the
point, we don't often know what do so with that information. So
those are the things that I'm referring to in terms of domestic
activities and that's going to be very expensive.
The Chairman. I'd ask both you and it's not our practice
here to cross-examine our colleagues, but I'd ask him to chime
in with you. What are medical schools doing? What are medical
schools doing about training students?
I'm a lawyer. Law schools are beginning to shift their
focus on how they train lawyers to deal with some of the real
and emerging concerns that exist within the law, different
emphasis. For example, my law school which is not one of the
top 10 law schools, but a very good law school, but no, I mean
it's not one of the prestige law schools. I went to Syracuse.
It's a very good law school.
My law school now is rated one, two or three in terms of
their emphasis on trial practice and clinics and they double
the size of the law school just with one thing, providing
clinics so that you have students in the community dealing with
specific advocacy on specific issues.
Tulane Law School, not one of the top three or five, but a
very, very good law school, has probably the single best
environment law department in the Unites States of America and
has through their law students--I mean, before they even got
their degrees, fundamentally altered some of the toxic tort
cases that are going on and so much so the Louisiana
legislature is considering defunding them. I'm told literally,
not figuratively. So what are medical schools doing here?
Senator Frist. Mr. Chairman, let me just jump in. Because
when anthrax hit here and because I knew at that time before
New York had been exposed to this, I knew that it took six days
for, without going to which patient it was, to make the
diagnosis of the anthrax rash and it was interesting.
If you really walk through that, some of it, most of it's
been talked about before in the press, but this was with the
very best doctors, with the CDC, with the best in
transportation and the finest people, you know, a city that is
advanced medically, it took six days. That's where we started.
So the first letter that I wrote and contact I made as soon as
anthrax hit here on October 14th was to the American
Association of Medical Colleges and wrote every one of the
deans personally myself to basically say, we got work to do.
It's not their fault. It's nobody's fault.
The Chairman. No one's suggesting fault. I didn't mean to
imply that.
Senator Frist. Exactly. But it's very important because as
a doctor and I was trained in infectious disease because when I
transplant these hearts, the heart transplant's easy, but it's
keeping the infections down. So that's what I spent my life
doing yet I never had seen, the same question I asked--I was
pretty confident you hadn't seen it. I've never seen a picture
of the anthrax rash, never had any reason to. Or Ebola or
tularemia or smallpox. Yet those are the ones that our
intelligence community says we're at risk for today.
So anyway the response was we got together, the deans
together within about two weeks and it's sort of working its
way through the curriculum. But that was an immediate response.
The American Medical College, a group of medical schools, about
125, got together and the response has been pretty good there.
The Chairman. Yes, Dr. Sands.
Dr. Sands. I happen to just know a little bit about this
because my own Senator has been trying to reach out to the
medical community in a variety of ways to try to provide
training on the broader context. Obviously we aren't the
technical folks, but we know the political context and the
history and something about the interest and use and perhaps
delivery of some of these weapons.
We have talked to a couple groups and actually put together
a proposal that was to fit into curriculum changes that I
believe are happening both in medical schools and the schools
of public health. The funding that you all have provided is
actually making a difference that has gone out to schools of
public health to really integrate much more extensively
information about the medical and technical components of this
concern over biological threats.
I know the American College of, I think it's called the
American College of Emergency Practitioners has a task force
that they've created and actually done a study on WMD concerns
and their major thrust is how to integrate more educational
aspects of this concern into their ongoing curriculum both for
the, you know, first time you come through the curriculum as
well as sort of catching up people who've been the field.
They've at least got a whole set of recommendations that if
implemented effectively, will in fact address some of these
concerns, but they're just beginning. I mean, but what's nice
to see is they are actually moving forward on it and I don't
know, Al, you might know more specifically.
Dr. Zelicoff. Well there's an old saw in medicine, I'm
sure Dr. Frist knows it. You see what you know and you know
what you see. And if you've never seen a case of smallpox,
anthrax, tularemia, botulism, you aren't about to make the
diagnosis.
The point is that there's always somebody out there who's
seen it, read about it or like Dr. Frist happened to take a
personal interest in it and if simply brought into the net, if
brought into the web, the diagnosis rapidly emerges.
That's precisely what we're trying to do here and the good
news is that most public health officials are not only experts
at what goes on in their community on a routine basis, they're
smart enough to know when something unusual is happening just
by dint of their experience.
The one thing they don't have is the data. And if you make
that data available to them, I'm highly confident in the vast
majority of circumstances, they will be able to make the
diagnosis early and get advice to the physician who has done
the report in a timely fashion to not only save that patient,
but to anticipate the additional casualties that will be
occurring and to prevent them.
The Chairman. The reason why I asked the question is
obvious, but I want to be a little more detailed. I recall how
when Senator Frist in a joint meeting that we held because we
needed a big room in the Senate dining room when all Senators,
all 100, if not 100, 98 were there.
I recall that it was incredibly complicated, but in one
sense relatively easy to understand. I've been a great consumer
of health care services. I spent seven months in intensive care
and/or in an operating room or in a hospital or in recovery
with a couple aneurisms, cranial aneurisms and a little
embolism in between and I remember the neurosurgeons what they
did with me and I mean, I know this sounds strange, but I think
it's illustrative of the possibilities here.
Between my first and second aneurism after I got out of the
IC unit after 40 days with the embolism, they would literally
have their staff at Walter Reed come up, the neurosurgeons, and
have me identify, they put angiograms up on a slide for me and
had me identify whether or not there was an aneurism or there
was not an aneurism to teach me about it, knowing I'd be
questioned a lot about this when I left the hospital being a
public official and so that I didn't indirectly cause cardiac
arrest among their organizational structure for identifying or
making statements that were simply not accurate relative to
aneurisms.
I remember when Dr. Frist was laying out for us and
actually giving us some and the colleagues he had brought along
with him, what were the signs, what were the symptoms, what to
look for, et cetera, that it struck me at the time, for
example, it's the same with doctors, lawyers are required to
continue to go to CLS classes, continuing legal services
education classes. Once a year you have to show up for that
purpose.
I assume there's a same thing in most if not all medical
societies in every state. I assume--am I correct in assuming,
Dr. Sands, you're talking about the emergency physicians. Is
there any discussion that part of the continuing medical
education of doctors as they show up that they be educated at
least to the four or five or six or three most likely diseases
they may encounter that would be the result of a natural spread
of the disease or as a consequence of a terrorist taking such
action?
Is that being contemplated or is that underway? Again, this
is not casting aspersions or blaming anybody. This is all brand
new to everybody.
Dr. Zelicoff. It is. There's one clear piece of evidence
for that. This year on the national boards at least in internal
medicine, there are four questions about bio-terrorism agents.
There are four.
The Chairman. That's interesting.
Dr. Zelicoff. The bad news is, to repeat what I said
earlier, you can read about measles for months and if you've
never seen a case, you're not about to make the diagnosis. The
point is that someone else will almost certainly make the
diagnosis of a bio-terrorism related condition outside the
clinic where the physician is working even if they've been
educated in it.
The Chairman. Now, one of the things that we've all talked
about in this committee because we have particular jurisdiction
over it is some of these diseases occur naturally in the
environment. For example, the plague. I mean there were two
significant cases in India not to long ago. One of the cities
was fairly well-educated and responded with serious factual
information. One did not.
The damage done varied between the two cities without
boring my colleagues with the detail, but the bottom line is
that there are a number of places where these disease may in
fact occur naturally in the environment, if you will, and they
have very little public health infrastructure.
We talk about it with regard to dealing with AIDS which is
a different subject. I'm not suggesting it's the same at all.
In Africa, an area that Dr. Frist and Senator Feingold and
others have spent a lot of time focusing on and we have an
attempt here to try to provide through our foreign assistance
budgets the ability of these public health organizations or the
lack thereof in these countries, assistance.
The thing that I wonder about as a practitioner without
any, not a medical practitioner, a political practitioner of
this trade figuring out how to deal with aid to other countries
is these programs tend to work that we fund if they're models
that are actually able to be picked up by countries that lack
this infrastructure or lack expertise.
I guess the question that I have if anyone wishes to
respond to it, they may or come back in writing or pursue it in
another forum, is what models are there available for helping
countries, Third World countries in particular.
I'm not in anyway, Mr. Moodie, suggesting the Europeans
need not pay more attention where they have the capability, but
in those countries where they do not have much of a public
health infrastructure, are there models or are there means by
which we can disseminate information and financial resources to
help them? Because, you know, if Ebola breaks out in a country,
if smallpox were to break out, intended or unintended, which is
highly unlikely to be unintended right now.
As you said, an airplane's a hell of an incubator and it
sure can travel long distances. What should we be doing, this
committee, this Congress, this government to deal with that
dilemma?
Mr. Moodie. Senator, I think that first of all, it's a
huge task because there is such an inadequacy in terms of
infrastructure in so many parts of the world. So it comes back
to the point you were making before about setting priorities. I
think both Amy and Al in their way have stressed what should be
the starting point which is disease surveillance capabilities.
The ability to identify, report and understand has got to be
the starting point for doing that.
At the moment, globally, there are a lot of things going
on, whether they're under the auspices of the World Health
Organization or private surveillance activities, PROMED for
example, a number of other things. But there's nothing that
brings these things together. There's nothing that makes it a
strategically coherent approach to this, and there are places
still where it doesn't happen.
So while there are other aspects of public health in parts
of the world that also have to be pursued in terms of
capabilities on the ground, I think that the first place to
begin is by emphasizing the surveillance issue, in part because
it serves a dual purpose.
One is that it will help us deal with issues of emerging
and re-emerging infectious diseases. Second, a better global
disease surveillance and reporting system might also be helpful
in distinguishing between a naturally occurring, although
unusual outbreak, and in fact a deliberate attack.
I know that is a very difficult thing to do. But, over
time, with a developing system, we at least are moving in that
direction where nothing exists today. So I think it's a huge
task, but in terms of setting priorities my own would be to
focus initially on disease surveillance and reporting and to
move forward on a global basis working with a number of pieces
that are already in place as the foundations on which to build,
to bring together and to move forward.
Dr. Zelicoff. If I can build on what Mike just said. I
think also we have to do disease surveillance in a different
way than we've done it in the past. Our emphasis has always
been on spreading laboratory equipment around and then using
that laboratory equipment to make disease specific diagnoses.
That's scientifically the nice way to go. It's also by far
the single most expensive way to go. Instead, a surveillance
system that focuses not on requiring a laboratory based
diagnosis but the physician's suspicion of unusual signs and
symptoms associated with geographic information like this goes
a long way, goes 80 percent of the way to making the diagnosis.
To put it another way, I don't think in a world of limited
resources we need more laboratory equipment sprinkled around
the world. We need much more intelligent use of the laboratory
resources we currently have and testing thousands of people for
anthrax when a few people have been exposed is an example of
exactly what not to do.
Mr. Moodie. I think part of it also has to do with
changing government attitudes. One of the reasons the plague in
India had the impact that it did was the hesitance on the part
of the Indian government to acknowledge it, to get the
resources in. That is a political issue, and there are a lot of
political sensitivities about the way the WHO does it's work as
an international organization which I'm sure you all know much
better than I do. Part of this also has to be changed in
government attitudes towards the importance of disease
surveillance, getting the information out where it's needed so
that people can deal with it in a way to deal with the problem.
The Chairman. We see that in Africa with AIDS.
Mr. Moodie. Absolutely.
The Chairman. Sure.
Mr. Moodie. And I think that's got to be part of the
campaign in addition to getting the kinds of equipment on the
ground that will help move things forward.
Dr. Sands. Senator, just one other additional comment to
add to what my two colleagues have already said. I mean, I
think it would be useful to actually review what infrastructure
might exist in, you know, around the world in different
regions.
For example, I'm aware of the fact that under the Soviet
system there was a rather extensive system of what we'll call
the anti-plague institutes that did in fact disease monitoring
for the reasons, I mean, in part because of BW program, I think
they were trying to sort of be ahead of that one for
themselves, but have especially in central Asia I think fallen
sort into disarray. But they have a very rich history and they
know their communities. They could be the basis of a capability
in central Asia which would be a critical area I think to be
able to get more data out of and it could be a model for other
areas.
Senator Frist. Mr. Chairman, this is a fascinating
discussion. About a year and a half ago after looking at what
was done for our public health system here, which Dr. Zelicoff
hit right on the head, underinvested, no infrastructure out
there, easy to do, we just got to do it.
Then we went and I and several other people requested from
the GAO a report just on this. I was interested internationally
because now we know germs have no borders, what we've heard all
day which is obvious, but it's not obvious to the way we've
traditionally looked at things.
We looked at what we have in public health here,
inadequate, underinvested in the past and we asked for a GAO
report about a year, I think it was last fall, and it was
called Challenges in Improving Infectious Disease Surveillance
Systems.
It concluded, this GAO report and we can share it with
everybody, it concluded that global disease surveillance
especially in developing countries is woefully inadequate to
provide advance warning about newly emerged diseases including
things like antibiotic resistant tuberculosis or the suspected
use and testing of dangerous organisms as bio-weapons.
We got most of the information there. Dr. Sands, I think we
need to update it as we go forward. And I think your bill, Mr.
Chairman, is on this Global Pathogen Surveillance Act this
year, you know, by the time we finish that, I think we can make
a great bill which addresses just this.
One final comment. You mentioned the plague and in our list
that I keep kind of spewing out and Dr. Zelicoff mentioned
because that's not the focus of this hearing, but things like
Ebola we don't know anything about. We don't know why Ebola
occurs. We don't know why it reoccurs. About 30 or 40 cases in
East Africa the other day, central East Africa, we have no idea
really.
Now, the good news, the NIH right now announced four days
ago that they're developing a vaccine against Ecola, but it's
again matching how little we know with the intelligence with
the response whether it's NIH or CDC as we go forward.
You mentioned the plague and in passing, Dr. Moodie
mentioned it. What happened there was panic, was surge
capacity, overwhelming the system, lack of trust of government,
people leaving, fleeing the city. This is one of the two cases
that you mentioned. This isn't ancient history, this is
recently. And that was a good point.
It's the exact same thing that happened at an exercise that
we in part funded, a public/private partnership called Top Off
and it was at the Denver Performing Arts, it was an exercise,
everybody's heard about it. But that was the same plague that
you referred to. It's the same little entity, little micro-
organism and there we found that through this exercise of using
the very best of what we had in 2000, 2001 and using this
model, we had 950 people to 2,000 people dead after just a few
weeks, 4,000 people in hospitals and mass panic, distrust of
government, breakdown of civil institutions.
I say all this because what you mentioned recently with the
plague internationally is exactly what we through our best
modeling have demonstrated what happened here, all of which we
can fix. We can reduce these vulnerabilities by engaging the
sort of legislation you put forward, support of our public
health infrastructure, adopting programs like we've been
introduced to today in terms communication among health
officials as we go forward.
Dr. Zelicoff. And we know that that works. New Mexico, my
home state, is the land of the flea and the home of the plague.
Yet, there's never panic when we have plague cases and we have
half a dozen a year. Why is that? It's because we're easily
able to share our expertise on that one illness between the
public health department and local clinicians.
So when a plague case is announced as it will be announced
this fall, it happens ever year, there's never panic in New
Mexico simply because we have experience in dealing with it and
that can be shared through systems like this.
Mr. Moodie. I also think it underlines the need to be
sensitive to the whole range of potential problems here. I'm a
little bit concerned that because of our recent experience and
because of the potential implications of it, we've become
mesmerized with anthrax and smallpox and that's it. That's
where our attention is, that's where the money's going, that's
where the medicines are going, the stockpiles are dealing with
that. But we've got plague, tularemia and who knows what else;
water born pathogens of various kinds that nobody ever talks
about; for example, cryptosporidium and a variety of other
things.
It seems to me we are going to do ourselves a disservice.
The agent is part of the risk that we have, but the threat is
constituted by how that agent interacts with who have it, how
they're going to use it, against what kinds of targets. So I
think that, as we move forward on this, we just can't be
mesmerized by the immediate event of the day, but recognize the
range of potential dangers here is much greater than it has
been suggested. We've got to find ways of dealing with that
whole range. Today, things like surveillance can't do it. They
are the ones that are going to make the distinctions to allow
us to react appropriately to the range of agents that
potentially exists.
The Chairman. Quite frankly, it seems to me this is
probably the biggest bang for the buck. I mean the ancillary
benefits that flow from this kind of initiative in the broader
scale are so profound and so welcome and so beneficial in terms
of bang for the buck, it seems to me that this is the ultimate
win/win initiative we could have.
I've trespassed on your time much too much. I'm going to
ask a number of questions particularly to you, Mr. Moodie and
you, Dr. Sands, about what we didn't get into at all. The only
place I do have any expertise and that is the arms control side
of this agenda which is we're in a new age, a new time and in a
sense to be overly simplistic, but we need a new arms control.
We need a new way to deal with arms control.
It's not the only tool, but it's an important tool here and
I may ask you to consider whether or not you would be willing
to come back at another time and also whether you would
entertain my staff out in Monterey to go into much more detail
with you. I know they'd hate to be sent there. I don't why
anybody would ever leave Monterey.
But any rate, for example, there's a need for new thinking
you point out, Mr. Moodie, but we need some specifics about
again something I've spent a lot of time thinking about. I'm
not sure I'm right but, you know, the issue that you point out
that how do we deal with Biological Weapons Convention
challenge with those who are cheating and those who are not
parties?
There's a distinction there and as you recall, because I've
been doing the arms control beat for so long on other issues,
you now, the great complaint that began to be mouthed by people
like the former Secretary of Energy.
Dr. Zelicoff. Slesinger?
The Chairman. Slesinger was that the Atoms for Peace
program, the IEA, were counterproductive in that they spread
knowledge rather than contained it. Well, you point out this
issue of maybe we separate this notion of access limitation of
a capability and aid, that to join a treaty to gain access may
be counterproductive for our interests.
And I think it's an entire area we have to explore that we
haven't paid much attention to. And so I really think your
contribution, Dr. Sands, about you know re-examining the
assumptions is probably the most useful way to begin a lot of
this discussion.
But I'd like to conclude by again, I've taken so much of
your time. As you can tell, my interest is almost unending on
this subject, but the thing I want to thank the three of you
for is for having taken this so seriously, taking your
invitation to come before this committee as serious as you
have.
It's obvious from your presentations that you took it very
seriously and I just want you to know the committee and I in
particular and you could tell by the questions here, we take
your input very, very seriously. And it's a little big like,
you know, when you sign up and you make a--I could never
understand why I thought it was just purely out a noble
instinct why occasionally very wealthy individuals contributing
to a charity wanted to make their contribution anonymous.
I now understand why and that is they get called on
repeatedly once their name gets put on the list and maybe even
sold, which is another privacy issue we have to talk about, but
any rate, I unfortunately for you all your contributions are
taken seriously.
You're about to be put on the list, if you will. I suspect
you'll get a lot more requests for your input and I want to
repeat, Mr. Moodie, what the guy whose been the leader in
dealing with the proliferation issue, nonproliferation I guess
is more accurate than proliferation issue, Senator Lugar has
said.
Your help on the House side was invaluable. You've kicked
the can. You've helped us kick up the visibility here. As you
recall a couple years ago, there was talking about zeroing out
most of these initiatives. It's still woefully inadequate, but
it's at least four to six times what it was likely to have been
and it's in large part due to your help and we appreciate it
very, very much.
In truth, I would suggest that it's ultimately because of
Senator Lugar--when the administration testified before this
committee with their budget request, they expected to get a
hard time from me, but I don't think they expected as blunt and
as straightforward, although he would never characterize it
this way, as threatening a response as they got from Senator
Lugar.
So maybe together we can continue to make some progress
here. And I thank you all for your input here and assure you
we'll be asking each of you again hopefully in the not too
distance future for additional help and maybe ways in which we
can help implement some of what you're suggesting, Doctor, with
regard to allowing public health officials to have access to
this additional information which seems to me to be, although
very difficult to put together, an alarmingly simple and cost-
effective way to help us make progress here.
Dr. Zelicoff. Thank you.
The Chairman. I am absolutely convinced that the American
people are fully capable of dealing with anything that they
face given sufficient information, given sufficient honest
input, there's not much we can't handle and so I thank you all
for your input.
If anyone would like to make a closing comment, I'd welcome
it. Not required. By the way, the entirety of each of your
statements will be placed in the record and as a friend and I'm
going to take the time to see that each of my colleagues are
not mailed the whole transcript because they'll never read that
nor do they have time. There's no possibility.
It's interesting, up here we're, as should be expected by
our constituents, to be experts in everything from weapons of
mass destruction to HCVA, from the Corps of Engineers to
education and it's not possible. I think your three individual
submitted statements for the record are worth reading for my
colleagues and so I'm going to make sure they get copies of it.
Mr. Zelicoff. I have one closing thought. What I've just
heard you say is that investments in public health are really a
no regrets philosophy. Good counterterrorism is in fact good
public health and even if there is never a terrorist attack on
a large scale--and let's hope there isn't--the public health
system will benefit and that will improve the rational care of
medical care in the Unites States.
The Chairman. I just think the benefits are so--I mean,
like you said, if there's not ever a single solitary additional
effort to use any pathogen or disease as a weapon or I mean, we
need this, period.
For example, when I talk about the need to improve our
safety and surveillance capabilities with regard to targets,
different issue, the actual specific targets that terrorists
may use, people look at me because I fixate on the rail system
which is so vulnerable. And I point out to everybody the City
of Baltimore shut down for the better part of a week because
there was a fire in a tunnel. A fire. A fire. Nothing more. An
accidental fire in a tunnel.
And so when my colleagues point out to me that, you know, I
may be wrong about a terrorist attack occurring in whatever
form in one of the tunnels on the system, I point out to them
that it's a good thing to modernize the tunnel, period,
unrelated to whether or not there is a terrorist attack. It's a
good thing to modernize, bring into the 21st century our public
health system just in terms of connectivity, as they say in the
ads, even if there weren't any threat of terrorism.
Mr. Moodie. Mr. Chairman, if I might make just the last
comment on your remarks about where do we go in arms control.
Our institute actually right now is engaged in a study that's
focusing on exactly that, and we hope to have recommendations
well before the resumption of the review conference in
November. We would very much welcome your personal
participation and that of your staff, not only in terms of the
finished recommendations, but also in the process of getting us
there. We'd welcome that support and very much look forward to
it. Thank you.
The Chairman. We are like poor relatives. We show up when
we're invited. So I thank you all very, very much. We are
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:38 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.]
Statement Submitted for the Record by Senator Russell D. Feingold
Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this important hearing. I am
grateful for the opportunity this hearing provides to discuss the
threats caused by chemical and biological weapons. This is a serious
threat that cannot be ignored. Indeed, I believe the anthrax attacks on
the United States last fall startled all of us. They demonstrated that
biological weapons can be delivered with relative ease, resulting in
widespread fear and confusion. And while the loss of life in those
attacks was itself a terrible tragedy, I think many of us were also
surprised by the level of disruption caused by the subsequent clean-up
operations. The attack here on the Capitol closed a large public office
building for months, requiring extensive remediation efforts at
significant taxpayer expense. It is clear today that these weapons pose
a significant threat to both our civilian population and to our
civilian infrastructure.
We must act forcefully to respond to these threats. But to respond
effectively, we must first understand the nature of the threat, and we
must do a better job of monitoring the materials that can be used to
make these weapons. If we have had a difficult time in keeping track of
some of our own biological materials here in the United States, we can
imagine that the breakup of the former Soviet Union created an
unprecedented opportunity for terrorists and rogue states alike to
acquire chemical and biological materials and technologies. The
challenge now is to create the right balance of incentives and mandates
to convince all states to adhere to the international regimes that have
been created to control the proliferation of chemical and biological
weapons materials. I trust this hearing today will begin to explore the
contours of a robust and ultimately more effective international regime
to reduce the threats posed by chemical and biological weapons.