On Eve of Kyl Hearings on Bioterrorism, a Helpful Prescription

(Washington, D.C.): Finally, the editorial pages of the New York Times have
published
information that helpfully raises public awareness of the dangers posed by biological weapons —
including constructive suggestions for reducing the Nation’s present, complete vulnerability to
such threats — without genuflecting in the direction of counterproductive arms control
initiatives.

Specifically, an op.ed. article authored by investigative journalist and author Richard
Preston
and published today (see the attached) refrains from advocating
the addled notion advanced
previously by successive Times editorials and op.ed. articles: the addition of new and
highly
intrusive inspection provisions to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention will a) make that
wholly unverifiable treaty more verifiable and b) measurably reduce the threat of biological
warfare. As the Center for Security Policy has noted repeatedly in recent months, href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾ such an
initiative will make no positive contribution to controlling — let alone eliminating —
the
burgeoning threat of biological warfare. To the contrary, it is likely to
impede practical steps
that can reduce the United States’ vulnerability to such warfare.

Preston’s Helpful Recommendations

Consider several of the specific measures Mr. Preston urges be adopted promptly in the face
of
threats from such biological agents as anthrax and smallpox:

• “As experts with whom I’ve been talking see it, the first step needs to be the
  involvement of
  public health doctors in emergency planning. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and
  Prevention remain largely uninvolved, disconnected from the planning loop and inadequately
  financed for the task.

• “State and local public health surveillance needs to be strengthened. That
  would have an
  immediate payoff, since it would help control new and emerging ‘natural’ diseases that are now
  taking lives in this country. And if a bioterror attack is recognized early, many lives can be
  saved.

• “There is a good vaccine for anthrax. It can work even if it’s given to a
  person who has
  already been exposed. The Government would need to fly in many tons of antibiotics and
  vaccine. But there’s no stockpile of antibiotics or anthrax vaccine. Such a stockpile
  could stop the dying quickly and reduce fear. It might also discourage a terrorist from
  using anthrax.

• “A Web site should be set up that any public-health or primary-care doctor could
  look
  at, offering basic information and training modules in anthrax and smallpox.

• “There is a new way to make smallpox vaccine that is fast and cheap. But it needs
  approval from the Food and Drug Administration, and manufacturing capability must be
  set up. Enough vaccine to protect the entire American population could be stored in a
  building smaller than a garage, and the vaccine would last for decades before it had to
  be replaced with fresh stocks. That would pretty much remove smallpox from the
  arsenal of a terrorist.”

Needed: Cooperation with Industry, Rather Than Its
Persecution

Mr. Preston’s unsaid, but implicit, point is that the U.S. government must develop
partnerships with business and academia to advance efforts to provide for the common
defense of these threats. The same observation was recently made very explicitly by
the
Clinton Administration’s first Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey.

As Mr. Woolsey put it in a filmed interview conducted with the Center for Security Policy on
17
March:

“There are things that we can do if we form a partnership between the government and
the life sciences industry that is as close and enduring as the partnership between the
aerospace business and the Defense Department … [a relationship] that is much closer
than it has ever been in the past.

“[If such a partnership exists,] there are a number of things that one can make
improvements in: sensors to detect when biologicals have been released;
medicines to treat them …. It takes a great deal of discipline and it would take a
great deal of production and dissemination of medicine and training of first
responders and mobile hospitals and the like.

“One way I think we could destroy the possibility of having that kind of
partnership [between government and the life sciences industry] is to move
toward some ineffective and very intrusive notion of how to verify the
Biological Weapons Convention. Trying to have a verification regime that
would on a routine basis would go into pharmaceutical facilities and look at them
would really only penalize the people who are … behaving themselves and staying
within the law …. You’re not going to find what Hezbollah is doing with
biological weapons that way or, for that matter, a Unabomber, who thinks about
using biologicals instead of explosives in packages.”⁽²⁾

A Clear and Present Danger

Director Woolsey’s observation about Hezbollah as a potential biothreat is particularly timely.
An
unclassified CIA memorandum dated 23 February 1998 and obtained by one of the Nation’s
foremost experts on Middle Eastern and Islamic terrorism, Steven Emerson, indicates that an
open season has been declared on Americans worldwide with the issuance recently of several
fatwas — religious decrees that amount to death warrants. According to this Agency
memo:

“A coalition of Islamic groups in London and terrorist financier Usama Bin
Laden have issued separate fatwas, or religious rulings calling for attacks on U.S.
persons and interests worldwide, and on those U.S. allies. Although referencing the
current confrontation with Iraq, both fatwas call for attacks to continue until U.S.
forces, ‘retreat’ from Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem. The fatwa from the groups in
London also calls for attacks until sanctions on Iraq are lifted.

“These fatwas are the first from these groups that
explicitly justify attacks
on American civilians anywhere in the world. Both groups have hinted in the
past that civilians are legitimate targets, but this is the first religious ruling
sanctifying such attacks.

“While the religious clerics who issued these rulings are not named, the two
groups consider the fatwas to be legitimate. The group in London made
reference to unnamed religious authorities in Lebanon, Jordan and
‘Palestine.’” (Emphasis added throughout.)

In an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on
Technology,
Terrorism and Government Information — chaired by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) — on 24 February
1998, Mr. Emerson, who serves as Executive Director of the Middle East Forum’s Investigative
Project, testified that Hezbollah and other Mideast-based terrorist organizations have developed
ominous networks in this country. Such infrastructures could enable attacks involving
biological or other weapons of mass destruction to be carried out in this country.

Highlights of Mr. Emerson’s chilling testimony included the following:

• “…In the past five years since the World Trade Center [bombing], the whole
  panoply of
  radical Islamic movements have sprung up [in the United States] from Hezbollah to
  Hamas to Islamic Jihad.“

• “…All of these extremist movements have established strong networks of
  supporters,
  sometimes command and control, sometimes funding operations, very extensive political
  operations that essentially have rendered the United States a major center of militant
  Islamic activity worldwide.“

• “We in the United States should be very clear. We face not only a threat of violence from
  these groups present in the United States, but we allow our own allies to be attacked — and
  violently attacked — from the safety of the United States.”

The Bottom Line

The Center commends Senator Kyl, a distinguished member of its Board of Advisors and
recipient of the 1994 “Keeper of the Flame” award, for convening another hearing tomorrow
which will focus on the chemical and bioterrorism threat to the United States. In addition to
Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis
Freeh, Sen. Kyl’s subcommittee jointly
with the Senate Intelligence Committee will take testimony from Messrs. Preston and Woolsey
and from Iraq expert Dr. Christine Gosden.

It can only be hoped that this series of hearings will help Sen. Kyl persuade the
Clinton
Administration and the Congress to move immediately to end America’s “criminally
irresponsible” policy of assured vulnerability to weapons of mass destruction, whether
delivered by terrorists, ballistic missiles or other means.

– 30 –

1. See the following Center Decision Briefs:
Clinton Legacy Watch # 20: More Evidence of the
Mounting Biological Warfare Threat and the Inadequate U.S. Response ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_44″>No. 98-D 44, 10
March 1998); Guess Who Else Is Cooking Up Biological Weapons?
Russia (No. 98-D 35, 25
February 1998); and Clinton Legacy Watch # 18: Assured U.S. Vulnerability in the
Face of a
Burgeoning Biological Warfare Threat (No. 98-D
30, 20 February 1998).

2. Lest there be any doubt on this score, consider the example of Iraq.
For nearly seven years, the
full scope and status of Saddam Hussein’s illegal BW program has eluded the most intrusive
inspection system imaginable. It is certainly the case that any BWC verification regime will be less
comprehensive, timely and thorough than that under which UNSCOM has ostensibly operated.