Memo to the President

(Washington, D.C.): Mr. President: Sunday’s New York Times reveals that you
have become
personally seized with the Nation’s frightening vulnerability to biological warfare
(BW). If
that is the case, you have the potential to create a legacy that could be as profound and positive as
any of your Presidency. But to do so, you must take care to grasp the true magnitude of the
problem and to avoid counterproductive actions.

Getting Your Attention

According to the Times‘ report, your concerns about bioterrorism have been
catalyzed by
Richard Preston’s novel The Cobra Event href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾ and by a recent, secret interagency exercise in
which a bioterrorist attack was simulated. In both, terrorists use genetically-engineered
viruses to inflict mass casualties and to sow mayhem on American society.

You evidently were particularly, and properly, alarmed by the conclusion of the civilian
“war-game.” As the New York Times put it: “The United States, despite
huge investments of time,
money and effort in recent years, is still unprepared to respond to biological terror
weapons.” The game showed state, local and federal government representatives were
quickly
overwhelmed and found themselves at odds over how to deal with the resulting catastrophe — and
whose responsibility it was to do so.

As a result, you are now said to be preparing two Presidential Decision Directives (PDDs)
aimed:
1) at putting the country on a better footing to prevent biological, chemical or computer
attacks on its people or infrastructure and 2) if all else fails and they occur, to
mitigate their
effects. According to the Times, these PDDs would prepare to combat
such attacks by
organizing and marshaling U.S. resources in the following 10 areas:

“…apprehension and prosecution, disruptions abroad, international cooperation,
preventing weapon acquisition, crisis management, transportation security, critical
infrastructure, government continuity, countering foreign threats domestically and
protection of Americans abroad.”

Do’s and Don’ts

To maximize the benefit of these PDDs, the Center for Security Policy would respectfully
urge
that you consider two points:

‘Assured Vulnerability’:

First, the problem with which you are now grappling — namely, the
United States’
dangerous susceptibility to biological weapons attack — is, of course, just one manifestation
of a
much larger problem. This is what might be called our posture of “assured vulnerability.”

Ever since 1972, when President Nixon signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty with the Soviet
Union, it has been the policy of the U.S. government to leave its people deliberately
exposed
to destruction by missile-delivered nuclear weapons. Having done so in a world in
which the
USSR had a virtual monopoly on such a threat, the idea gradually took hold that it made no sense
to invest the vast sums required to protect Americans against Soviet bomber-delivered weapons,
either.

Moreover, if there would be no defenses against these delivery systems, it seemed
unnecessary
(not to say virtually impossible) to mitigate the effects on the population of the weapons they
carried. So civil defense went over the side, as well.

Thus, the vulnerability you are now concerned with, is a direct by-product of the
inexorable, if bizarre, logic that says keeping America at risk of assured destruction is a
good thing and defenses that might prevent, or at least mitigate such destruction, are
bad
things. If you are committed meaningfully to rectifying our present posture, you must
also
correct its intellectual underpinnings.

Unfortunately, until now, your Administration has adamantly insisted that it is committed to
perpetuating the ABM Treaty. If this policy were to persist, you would be seriously
compromising your new PDDs by addressing attacks with biological weapons if they are
made possible by suitcase bombs, aerosol trucks or Cessna crop-dusters, but not if they
come via ballistic missile.

Soviet/Russian BW Missiles? The folly of such an approach was laid bare
in the course of
testimony provided last week by Mr. Preston before a Senate hearing chaired by Sen. Jon Kyl,
Republican of Arizona. The best-selling author of The Cobra Event and The
Hot Zone — the
latter chillingly describes the devastation wrought by several natural outbreaks of deadly viruses, a
foretaste of what bioterrorists might be able to inflict — declared that Russia may have as many as
800 inter-continental range ballistic missiles aimed at the United States and armed with smallpox
or other viruses (including, perhaps, genetically engineered biological “cocktails”).

Proliferating Missiles: Surely you appreciate that, even if the former
Soviet Union’s own missile
and biological weapons programs were not cause enough for grave concern, there is this reality:
Thanks to in no small part to Russia and China, missile, biological weapons and other
WMD-relevant technology are turning up in other, potentially unfriendly hands. For example, it
was
revealed today that the Russians are assisting Indian efforts to develop a submarine-launched
missile system. Saturday, it was disclosed that Russia nearly succeeded in smuggling specialty
steel suitable for missile bodies to Iran. And China is known to have supplied missile technology
to, among others, Pakistan, Iraq and North Korea.

As you know, each of these countries is believed to have weapons of mass
destruction
programs. The absence of effective U.S. global missile defenses merely serves as an
incentive to
fit such weapons on missiles of ever-increasing capability, whether to threaten regional foes or
Americans and their interests. It makes no sense to try to close the backdoor to bioterrorism
while leaving the front door open.

Support, Don’t Destroy, Government-Industry Partnerships on
BW:

In addition to including comprehensive missile defenses in your WMD
vulnerability-reduction program — the fastest, simplest and cheapest way to do this is by
adapting the
Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense system to allow it to shoot down long- and shorter-range
ballistic missiles, as well aircraft and cruise missiles href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾ — there is something you should not
do:

Under no circumstances should the U.S. government endanger, if not preclude, the
cooperation its efforts to counter the threat of biological weapons must enjoy with the
biotech and related industries. Your first Director of Central Intelligence, R. James
Woolsey,
warns that:

“One way I think we could destroy the possibility of having that kind of partnership 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 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.“⁽³⁾

Despite your declaration in last January’s State of the Union address that you were
going to
seek verification enhancements to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) — and the
recommendation to do just that reportedly advanced by a panel of scientists and senior officials
you met with on 10 April — such a step would be highly counterproductive.

The Bottom Line

Mr. President, if you are serious about ending our Nation’s posture of assured vulnerability —
which will be readily apparent if you promptly begin deploying effective anti-missile systems and
eschew counterproductive arms control ideas — you will enjoy the support, and enduring
appreciation, of every American.

– 30 –

1. For more on Mr. Preston, see the Center’s recent Decision
Brief entitled On Eve of Kyl
Hearings on Bioterrorism, A Helpful Prescription (No.
98-D 68, 21 April 1998).

2. See Unhappy Birthday: 15th Anniversary of Reagan
SDI Speech Sees U.S. Still
Undefended, Warnings of ‘Haste’ in Fielding Defenses ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_51″>No. 98-D 51, 23 March 1998) and
Center High-Level Roundtable Highlights Looming Perils for U.S. On — and Over
— the Seas
(No. 98-P 67, 20 April 1998).

3. For more of Director Woolsey’s recommendations, see
Soviet Defector Offers Timely
Warning on Bioweapon Threat; Ex-CIA Director Woolsey Rejects On-Site Visits as
Rx (No.
98-D 53, 27 March 1998).