-Caveat Lector-
>From Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/01/29/fp1s1-csm.shtml
FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 1999
Launching a 'homeland' defense
� To protect itself from terrorism, United States embarks on protection
program reminiscent of early cold-war days.
Jonathan S. Landay ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON
There is not yet an equivalent of "Bert the Turtle," a cartoon made by the
US government in the 1950s to teach elementary school students about
surviving a Soviet nuclear attack.
But the United States is now engaged in the most intensive self-protection
drive since the civil-defense programs of those early years of the atomic
age.
Instead of nationwide fallout-shelter construction and urban-evacuation
plans, dozens of federal, state, and local agencies are pursuing a welter
of programs - from developing a 50-state defense against limited missile
strikes to shielding power grids from cybersabotage.
The military is training police, fire, and medical personnel in cities to
cope with biological and chemical terrorism, and there are proposals to
inoculate these "first responders" against anthrax. A national stockpile of
antidotes and antibiotics is being built. The military is mulling over
creating a commander for national defense, and some officials see a
not-too-distant day when all Americans may be offered shots against
biological-warfare agents.
Since 1995, President Clinton and the Republican-led Congress have boosted
spending on these programs by billions of dollars. In the last two weeks,
Mr. Clinton has announced he will add billions more for counterterrorism
and national missile defense (NMD) in the fiscal 2000 budget he sends next
month to Congress. Lawmakers are expected to embrace his plans, and perhaps
inject more money than he seeks.
These efforts have come to be known as "homeland defense." It is, asserts
Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre, "the defense mission of the next
century."
Yet at a time when the US is enjoying global military supremacy and its
longest stretch of peacetime economic growth, the preoccupation with
self-defense is raising a host of concerns.
Advocates say it is precisely because of its status as the world's sole
superpower that the US is facing new "asymmetric" threats. Unable to match
conventional US military capabilities, rival nations and terrorists are
looking to harness the massive killing potential of chemical and biological
weapons, the recipes and components of which are widely available, they
say.
Potential foes are also bent on disrupting communications and computer
systems critical to US defenses, financial systems, and utility sectors.
And "rogue" states like North Korea and Iran are developing missiles that
might reach the US mainland, advocates of homeland defense warn.
Clinton faces a delicate balancing act in selling these arguments to a
complacent public. "I have tried as hard as I can to create the right frame
of mind in America for dealing with this," he said Jan. 22 when unveiling
plans for dealing with terrorism and cybersabotage. "This is not a cause
for panic. It is a cause for serious, deliberate, disciplined, long-term
concern."
One major question is the extent of the threats facing the US, which saw
its first international terrorist strike in 1993 against New York's World
Trade Center and hasn't been hit by another nation since Japan sent
bomb-bearing balloons across the Pacific.
There is a major disagreement on the need for a limited NMD system.
Republicans and many experts are demanding deployment, citing a growing
threat of long-range missile attacks by rogue states. But others dispute
such forecasts, question the technical feasibility of such a system, and
warn that its construction could ignite a new nuclear-arms race with Russia
and China.
"Because of the likely response of the nuclear powers, we end up losing
more than we gain," says Carl Conetta of the the Cambridge, Mass.-based
Commonwealth Institute's Project on Defense Alternatives.
Clinton is taking a politically cautious middle path. He is proposing to
boost NMD spending by $6.6 billion to $10.5 billion but delay possible
deployment until 2005, two years later than planned, to allow more time for
resolving technical problems.
There is greater agreement on the need to improve federal, state, and local
abilities to detect chemical or biological terrorism and cope with the
aftermath. Yet the explosion in programs has raised concerns about
coordination and waste. Clinton last year created a new National Security
Council post to oversee the efforts, and some officials want the military
to create a commander for homeland defense. But the idea dismays some
senior officers, who want to focus on war-fighting.
Another issue is whether the government, in striving to protect Americans,
limits freedoms. Clinton conceded this concern in his Jan. 22 speech,
saying "it is essential that we do not undermine liberty in the name of
liberty."
Finally, some experts wonder if homeland defense will go the same way as
the cold-war civil-defense programs, which were abandoned with the
realization that no amount of money could secure the US from the threat of
nuclear annihilation. Even homeland-defense advocates admit determined foes
can find ways around defenses.
"You are dealing with such a wide variety of threats ... it's hard to say
with any certainty that you've done enough," says Baker Spring, a defense
analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in
Washington.
Yet many say it is vital for the US to take prudent, cost-effective steps.
"Our vulnerability to terrorism involving chemical and biological weapons
is extremely high," says Richard Falkenrath of Harvard University,
co-author of a book on new terrorist threats.
>From Star-Democrat
http://www.stardem.com/ap/world/1218bomb.html
Bio-weapon threat seen rising, but treaty talks are far from getting
results
<Picture>
U.N. weapons inspector team leader Scott Ritter, left, waits for an Iraqi
escort near the inspector's compound just outside Baghdad on Jan. 14, 1998.
Ritter quit the U.N. team in August. (AP Photo)
By MORT ROSENBLUM
AP Special Correspondent
PARIS (AP) - At least 10 countries are suspected of developing biological
weapons, American and European specialists warn, and contentious
international talks show scant promise of countering them.
The only legal barrier to toxic arms that can kill by the millions is the
toothless Biological Weapons Convention of 1972. Except for U.N.
resolutions on Iraq, no mandate allows spot checks across borders.
Opponents of new treaty provisions for inspection visits include not only
leaders with something to hide but also U.S. drug executives who fear for
the secrecy of research worth billions of dollars.
The result, scientists and intelligence analysts agree, is the nightmare of
a proliferating "poor man's bomb," potentially more deadly than nuclear
devices or chemical weapons such as nerve gas, at a fraction of the cost.
Already, U.S. and European officials see evidence that Russian experts are
helping several countries to perfect bioweapons, privately or officially,
and some states are believed cooperating with terrorists.
Also, they say, private Western suppliers are evading export controls to
sell equipment needed to make weapons.
During three years of negotiations in Geneva, a working group representing
more than 60 countries has produced a thick "rolling text" draft of new
proposals and a promise to work harder over 16 weeks next year.
Specialists are divided over what to expect. Some fear that a watered-down
new protocol to the treaty would do little more than create a false sense
of security.
Milton Leitenberg of the University of Maryland, who has tracked secret
bioweapons programs for decades, says experience in Iraq proved that a
committed offender can thwart the most dogged investigators.
"After eight years of blatant violations by Iraq - gross, transparent lying
- what are the implications for a new international treaty, even if we get
one?" he put it. "They are dreadful."
Others argue that any provision allowing visits would help even if
inspectors might not find a smoking gun. Signs of a coverup or other clues
can reveal the existence of a clandestine program, explained Matthew
Meselson of Harvard, longtime adviser to U.S. administrations.
Yet without some international control mechanism, he added, the world faces
"an eternal twilight of suspicion." Countries can inflict casualties or
destroy crops in ways that suggest natural causes.
"With weapons that go bang, you know when you're at war and who your enemy
is," Meselson said. "With biological weapons, it is different."
In a report to Congress this year, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency said bioweapons programs were confirmed or suspected in Russia,
Iraq, China, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Libya and Taiwan.
A separate Defense Department report said North Korea was pursuing germ
warfare research at universities and special centers and has tested
biological weapons on its island territories.
The U.S. Office of Technology Assessment says that Israel, which like Syria
and Egypt has not ratified the 1972 treaty, likely has the capacity to
deliver anthrax, botulinum toxin or other pathogens.
British authorities name 10 countries of "proliferation concern": Russia,
Iraq, North Korea, China, Iran, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Israel and Taiwan.
U.S. and European intelligence sources believe other hidden research
remains undetected elsewhere.
South Africa had a substantial capability until the early 1990s, and some
of it may remain. Cuba is suspected, among others.
India and Pakistan, which each surprised the world with nuclear bomb tests,
could easily develop biological weapons, specialists say, although nothing
yet shows that they have.
How serious and imminent the threat is remains largely guesswork, experts
say, because only intrusive inspections like those being forced on Iraq can
get at the truth.
Programs are easily hidden from spying satellites, cloaked by medical
research. So-called "dual use" equipment is exported to fight agricultural
pests and disease and then diverted to weaponry. <Picture>
In this picture from the United Nations, a worker under the supervision of
U.N. weapons inspectors dismantles a fermentation vat in Iraq which could
be used to produce biological weapons. (AP Photo)
"We don't know what's out there because you can't get in to find out,"
Leitenberg said.
Richard Spertzel, a former U.S. military microbiologist who directed the
U.N. teams that exposed Iraq's germ warfare work, echoed his point.
"If a government wants to hide a biological weapons program and can stall
an inspection visit by 24 to 48 hours, there's no way in hell you're going
to find it," said Spertzel, who is now retired.
"A country with know-how can obtain the necessary equipment," Spertzel
said, "and Iraq has proved that if a rogue state is willing to suffer for
any length of time, it can get away with it."
U.N. investigators estimate that Iraq has enough pathogens to kill
humankind twice over, and a dozen missiles to deliver some of the deadly
payload. This is apart from chemical weapons.
"Sanctions were and are a joke in Iraq," said Spertzel. "Stuff is still
going in there."
Scott Ritter, a former Marine who quit the U.N. Iraq team, accused Western
leaders of lacking the will to act firmly even when they know a country is
violating the Biological Weapons Convention.
"If the world won't stand up in Iraq where we do have a law," he asked,
"what can we expect where we don't have a law?"
Russian stockpiles and expertise remain a primary threat.
The 1972 treaty had no verification provisions, because of Soviet
objections and because delivery systems were still rudimentary.
President Richard Nixon dismantled the large U.S. biological weapons
program in 1969, leaving only defensive research permitted under the
treaty.
But U.S. officials say much remains of a Soviet program that until 1992
employed 60,000 people and stockpiled tons of lethal material.
Specialists fear Russia's economic slide has put irresistible pressure on
jobless scientists and technicians to hire out their skills, if not smuggle
equipment or deadly cultures.
The destruction of the Soviet Union's stock of smallpox was never verified,
said Donald A. Henderson of Johns Hopkins University, who directed the
World Health Organization program that eradicated the disease.
"Russia worries me," agreed Graham Pearson, former head of the Porton Down
center, which housed Britain's dismantled bioweapons program. "It is a big
problem."
European and U.S. intelligence reports say that not only some smallpox but
also anthrax strains and other agents were taken over by the Russian
military and shrouded in secrecy.
Ken Alibek, deputy director of the giant Biopreparat program until he
defected to the United States in 1992, confirms this, explaining that
Russian defense officials are free of most civilian oversight.
And, he adds, he believes that his former colleagues are still at work.
"It is hard for me to imagine that their efforts have no relation to
biological weapons," he wrote in the The New York Times.
Although details are classified, U.S. officials say freelance Russians - as
Alibek warned Congress - are helping Third World countries solve specific
problems in weaponizing pathogens.
Even at a government level, recent history is unsettling.
U.N. inspectors found evidence that Russia agreed in 1995 to sell Iraq a
sophisticated 5,000-liter fermenter, 10 times bigger than anything the
Iraqis had.
The relatively low-tech requirements of biological weapons are surprisingly
simple for governments to obtain, especially since most elements also have
legitimate uses in medicine or science.
This was evident in Iraq's case, at least until Saddam Hussein invaded
Kuwait in 1990.
Before Saddam came to be seen as a threat, Iraq obtained anthrax from a
Rockville, Md., lab. European companies supplied equipment and expertise.
Iraqi scientists studied in Western universities.
A British company supplied Iraq with 40 tons of growth medium when only
pounds of it were necessary for medical use. Authorities accepted the
explanation that it was a legitimate mistake. <Picture>
Army National Guard troops conduct exercises wearing protective suits in
Grayling, Mich., in this 1991 photo. The pair in front are simulating
testing for the presence of chemical or biological warfare agents such as
anthrax. Beyond Iraq, at least 10 countires are developing biological
weapons that can kill by the millions. (AP Photo)
But Rolf Ekeus, head of the U.N. inspectors in Iraq until last year, is
cynical about the role of Western business.
"Many suppliers know exactly what they are doing, and they are in it only
for the money," he said.
Ekeus has compiled a list of European sellers from seized Iraqi documents.
He won't name them, but said with a laugh: "Oh, perhaps only Liechtenstein
is not among them."
A treaty that allows routine visits or spot checks would have to apply to
all countries, and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
(Phrma) is opposed.
Such inspections, Phrma spokeswoman Gillian Woollett said, could not only
give competitors access to drug companies' secrets but also create unfair
publicity that could erode consumer confidence.
"At its best," she said, "a treaty is only for those who play cricket."
Drug executives cite a 1994 agreement that allowed American, British and
Russian teams reciprocal assess to build confidence after Russia was caught
developing anthrax.
Russian inspectors toured Pfizer plants and, Phrma charges, broke ground
rules against gathering commercial data, with no intervention by their U.S.
government escorts.
"Essentially," Woollett concluded, "we don't trust the government to
protect us."
President Clinton said in January that the United States would lead the
push for a tougher treaty that includes inspections to "help detect and
deter cheating."
But while the National Security Council and the CIA support site
inspections, other departments and agencies back the pharmaceutical
companies' position.
Amy Smithson of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington think tank which
follows the negotiations, says these conflicting interests create policy
gridlock, and few legislators are actively involved.
"I think this subject is so scary that no one wants to deal with it," she
said.
Smithson said the Geneva negotiations are further complicated by developing
countries which want to use them as leverage for getting more foreign aid.
In Britain, Pearson said so many governments want a stronger treaty that a
new protocol could be adopted without the United States.
Pearson advocates a four-part "web of deterrence:" a stronger treaty, along
with tough law enforcement, stockpiling of medicines and better
international cooperation.
"None of these will work by themselves," he said. "But together, they are a
significant deterrent. If one sees what he faces by using these things, he
may decide the price is too high."
Meanwhile, the United States has this year begun stepping up civil defense
measures, such as stockpiling medicines and educating public health
officials about the physical symptoms of potential pathogens.
But Meselson argues that heightening public anxiety about a terrorist
threat might goad extremists into trying their hand. Instead, he champions
concerted action to stop biological weapons at the source.
Along with Julian Robinson of England's University of Sussex, he proposes a
treaty to stop individuals and private companies from abetting biological
warfare.
This would target exporters and advisers without having to establish their
governments' involvement. Violators would be pursued across borders, as in
the case of genocide, piracy or hijacking.
Meselson insists that international treaties are vital to lessen the danger
even if they do not eliminate it.
"Every technology we have had has been exploited for human welfare but also
vigorously exploited for warfare," he concluded. "It is happening with
biological weapons. You can't give up on this."
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
