Issue No. 328, 30 March 2004

Articles & Other Documents: Censored Study On Bioterror Doubts U.S. Preparedness Growing Doubts On Vaccine In Military

Defense Panel Faults Nuclear Plans Musharraf Has Rumsfeld's Support In Nuclear Case

Iraqi Defector's Tales Bolstered U.S. Case For War Nuclear Security Decisions Are Shrouded In Secrecy

U.S. War On Anthrax Has Its Risks Iran Hiding Its Nuclear Activities, Report Says

Uranium From Congo Finds Way Into Market Chemical, biological tests planned for NTS

Senate Panels To Get New Iraq Weapons Report Director of Central Intelligence Special Advisor for Strategy regarding Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Programs

Judge Delays Lawsuit To Help Anthrax Probe EPA Staff Queried In Bioterror Probe

Welcome to the CPC Outreach Journal. As part of USAF Counterproliferation Center’s mission to counter weapons of mass destruction through education and research, we’re providing our government and civilian community a source for timely counterproliferation information. This information includes articles, papers and other documents addressing issues pertinent to US military response options for dealing with nuclear, biological and chemical threats and attacks. It’s our hope this information resource will help enhance your counterproliferation issue awareness. Established in 1998, the USAF/CPC provides education and research to present and future leaders of the Air Force, as well as to members of other branches of the armed services and Department of Defense. Our purpose is to help those agencies better prepare to counter the threat from weapons of mass destruction. Please feel free to visit our web site at www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-cps.htm for in-depth information and specific points of contact. Please direct any questions or comments on CPC Outreach Journal Jo Ann Eddy, CPC Outreach Editor, at (334) 953-7538 or DSN 493-7538. To subscribe, change e-mail address, or unsubscribe to this journal or to request inclusion on the mailing list for CPC publications, please contact Mrs. Eddy. The following articles, papers or documents do not necessarily reflect official endorsement of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or other US government agencies. Reproduction for private use or commercial gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. All rights are reserved

New York Times March 29, 2004

Censored Study On Bioterror Doubts U.S. Preparedness By Judith Miller Two years after a report on the 2001 anthrax attacks was completed, the Pentagon has released parts of the unclassified document, which concludes that the nation is woefully ill-prepared to detect and respond to a bioterrorist assault. In a sweeping assessment, the report identifies weaknesses in "almost every aspect of U.S. biopreparedness and response." But perhaps equally significant is the two-year battle over the Pentagon's refusal to release the study. That struggle highlights the growing tension between public access to information and the government's refusal to divulge anything it says terrorists could use to attack Americans. The dispute has pitted the Pentagon against the center that released the study, advocates of openness in government like the Federation of American Scientists, public health officials and even current and former emergency response officials of the Bush administration.

USAF COUNTERPROLIFERATION CENTER

CPC OUTREACH JOURNAL Maxwell AFB, Alabama

The dispute revolves around a 44-page analysis titled "Lessons from the Anthrax Attacks: Implications for U.S. Bioterrorism Preparedness." It was written by a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research center in Washington that conducts only nonsecret research for the government and other clients. The report was based largely on discussions among some 40 government and private experts on public health, national security and law enforcement who attended a meeting the center sponsored in December 2001. The report was written by David Heyman, director of the homeland security program at the center. It documents many systemic weaknesses in the nation's response to the October 2001 anthrax letter attacks that killed five people. The study also makes recommendations about how to prevent, detect and respond to such attacks. Many of those recommendations have been or are being adopted by the Bush administration. Since then, the center and the Project on Government Secrecy, part of the scientists' group, have been trying to get Pentagon permission to publish the complete report. But the Defense Department has refused. In a statement issued Friday, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Pentagon unit that commissioned the $150,000 study, said it had initially refused to release the document and was still preventing parts of it from being distributed. The statement said the study could "circumvent" Pentagon "rules and practices established to prevent the spread of information associated with W.M.D.," referring to nuclear, biological, chemical and other weapons of mass destruction. But several civil libertarians, scientists, public health officials and emergency response experts challenged the Pentagon's position. "This study was based on discussions that were held in an unclassified setting," said Jerome M. Hauer, a former assistant secretary for public health emergency preparedness in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Bush administration, who attended the December meeting. "To close the results of that forum is myopic and does nothing to better prepare this country to deal with those threats." Public health officials were also critical. "It was not my impression that the report contained information so sensitive that it could not have been shared," said Patrick Libbey, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. He said he had read an uncensored version of the document several months ago. John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary in the Clinton administration and now the director of the center, said that because all the materials used to produce it were public, the entire document should be released. Censored parts of the document were read to a New York Times reporter. In one instance in the redacted version, the summary states, "The fall 2001 anthrax attacks may turn out to be . . . to confront." The deleted passage reads: "the easiest of bioterrorist strikes." The anthrax letter crisis was slowly winding down in December 2001 when the 40 government and private biodefense, national security and pubic health experts met at the center for a daylong discussion of lessons learned from the attacks. In April 2002, Mr. Heyman completed his report, concluding that the attacks revealed dangerous "gaps in our scientific base" and badly strained the country's public health offices and laboratory infrastructure. "Biological weapons have the potential to cause casualties equal to, or far greater than, nuclear weapons," the report warns. A redacted version was published quietly Wednesday on the Federation of American Scientists' Web site: www.fas.org/irp/threat/cbw/dtra02 .pdf. Paradoxically, the study said one of the gravest problems during the attacks was the government's failure "on all levels" to provide "timely and accurate information." The report recommends, among other things, that the government expand public health laboratories and offices, establish a chain of command during attacks; develop "mass-medication and treatment delivery strategies in advance"; increase "cooperation between medical, public health and law enforcement communities"; establish a "comprehensive, balanced research agenda"; and develop a "coordinated media strategy." In April 2002, Mr. Heyman submitted his report to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. He said, the agency stamped it "for official use only," which limited its circulation to government officials and federal contractors, saying that public release "could reveal potential weaknesses" in the nation's emergency preparedness system. The center protested and the report was referred to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which upheld the agency. After the center again protested, Pentagon officials said in August 2002 that their decision was final. A year later, the Federation of American Scientists, which had learned of the study, requested it under the Freedom of Information Act. Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy, said that the Pentagon finally informed him this month that parts of the report could be publicly distributed. In a letter, H.J. McIntyre, chief of the Freedom of Information Act Policy Office at the Pentagon, said the censored information "could potentially aid enemies of the U.S. in development of techniques to defeat W.M.D. response efforts of the U.S. government." Mr. Aftergood called the redactions "arbitrary and unjustified."

"While we can't expect to defend against every conceivable attack, we can learn from experience," he said. "Refusing to disclose the lessons learned from the anthrax crisis is self-defeating in that it impedes that learning process." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/29/politics/29ANTH.html (Return to Articles and Documents List) Washington Post March 27, 2004 Pg. 1

Growing Doubts On Vaccine In Military Some Refuse, Citing Lack of Iraqi Anthrax By Marilyn W. Thompson, Washington Post Staff Writer With each report on the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Airman Jessica Horjus asked a question: If inspectors could find no signs of anthrax, why should the Pentagon risk her health by requiring her to get the anthrax vaccine? "I have a kid to take care of," said Horjus, 23, the mother of a 2-year-old, who lives with her daughter in military housing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, N.C. "The Air Force can always fill my slot with someone else, but who's going to fill the mommy slot?" When a January order came for Horjus to get the vaccine before deploying to a Kuwait air base about 30 miles from Iraq, the soldier with commendations and Good Conduct Medals declined. Her commander demoted her and cut her pay in half, to less than $800 a month. In February, she declined a second and third order. Horjus is one of a number of soldiers who cite the lack of anthrax in Iraq as a reason behind their stance against the mandatory anthrax vaccine. As the Pentagon moves thousands of troops into Iraq as part of a huge rotation of forces, soldiers, citizen groups and members of Congress are increasingly calling upon defense officials to stop the vaccinations. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) sent a letter last week to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asking him to reevaluate the mandatory policy in light of events in Iraq. "The apparent absence of an Iraqi biological warfare capability raises serious questions about the threat of an anthrax attack against our troops," Bingaman wrote. "The use of a vaccination which appears to have the potential for serious health consequences for our troops in an effort to counter a threat that may not exist seems to unnecessarily expose our troops to risk." The Pentagon now requires inoculation for any soldier about to deploy for more than 15 days to what it defines as a "high-risk" area for anthrax attack. Concerned about reports of illnesses and a death last year that officials linked to the vaccine, soldiers headed to Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are asking more questions about the program's rationale. "There is no evidence that stockpiles of anthrax exist in Iraq or with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere," Horjus wrote in a memo to the base's appellate authority. "As a single mother, I cannot afford to unnecessarily risk my long-term health on a highly-reactive vaccine that supposedly protects against a threat that cannot be found." After four years of service, the young mother last week accepted the Air Force's offer of an other-than-honorable discharge and prepared to return home to Yorktown, Va. Vaccine opponents say they are tracking dozens of cases of soldiers who are refusing the vaccine. The demand for troops is so high that unvaccinated soldiers may find themselves deployed nonetheless. Some are on duty in and near Iraq and are closely monitoring the frustrated hunt for banned weapons, knowing they will face punishment for disobeying orders when they return. Pentagon officials insist that refusals are extremely rare and that the unsuccessful search for the weapons has not changed their thinking about the merits of the mandatory vaccine. The anthrax threat, they say, is not a distant risk but was underscored by the 2001 domestic letter mailings that killed five people and left thousands vulnerable to grave illness or death. "The lethal anthrax attacks of the fall of 2001 did not need a sophisticated delivery system," Defense Department spokesman Jim Turner said in an e-mail response to questions. "We vaccinate our people to keep them healthy." Vaccine opponents have become increasingly organized and vocal about the health risks of the AVA vaccine, a product that has accumulated thousands of reports of adverse reactions ranging from headaches and vomiting to severe autoimmune and neurological problems. Opponents are using the courts to press the health issues and lobbying Congress to give relief to soldiers whose careers ended abruptly over their refusals to line up for shots. "When troops find out that any one portion of what they've been told is a lie, they question the rest of it," said Kathryn Hubbell, who helped set up a nonprofit group, the Military Vaccine Education Center, to work with soldiers. It is also organizing a political action committee to raise money for its lobbying efforts.

Among the hotly contested issues is the Pentagon's accounting of the number of soldiers who have been "separated" from the services for refusing to take the required six-shot regimen. Congress was so concerned about the issue in the program's early years, when hundreds of soldiers resigned the military rather than be vaccinated, that it began requiring the Defense Department to report annually the number of soldier separations. The department's reports for 2001 and 2002 show only three separations, and numbers for 2003 are due this spring. Vaccine opposition leader John Richardson, a retired Air Force Reserve lieutenant colonel, calls the Pentagon numbers a "willful misrepresentation" used to encourage good order and discipline. He says the Pentagon uses the strictest interpretation of the data, failing to count cases such as Horjus's that did not result in court-martial and forced removal from the military. Since the vaccine program began, about 100 active-duty soldiers have been court-martialed for refusing the vaccine, according to congressional testimony and documents. Victims' advocates say they have become aware of 45 cases involving vaccine refusers since 2002. These soldiers find themselves subjected to a wide range of punishments. "We've seen everything from quiet discharge to court-martial to imprisonment with 60 to 90 days in the brig," said Randi Airola, a victims' advocate who left the Michigan Air National Guard in 1999 because of her own vaccine refusal. "We've seen soldiers threatened with two to three to 10 years in prison when, in the military, even rape or drug charges may not get you 10 years in prison. The punishment is based solely on the discretion of the individual commander -- and some want to use a sledgehammer to get people to comply." Airola recently gave a congressional committee 32 pages of e-mails sent to her by soldiers who believe they have been made sick by the shots or are refusing to be vaccinated. "In light of these problems," she wrote, and the absence of weaponized anthrax spores in Iraq or Afghanistan, "it is unacceptable for Congress to continue to follow the line that the vaccine is safe, effective and good enough for our troops and to jail those who refuse." A key question in the vaccine debate is the safety of AVA, a product that has been used since the 1950s to inoculate textile workers and laboratory personnel at high risk of anthrax exposure. The vaccine was licensed by federal regulators without being tested in large-scale human clinical trials. But the Pentagon points to a 2002 report from the Institute of Medicine declaring the vaccine safe and effective. The vaccine, made by BioPort Inc. of Lansing, Mich., is now under attack in three separate federal lawsuits brought by affected soldiers. In U.S. District Court in Washington, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan issued a preliminary injunction late last year that caused the Pentagon to briefly halt vaccinations. The program resumed after the Food and Drug Administration offered assurances in February that the vaccine was safe. The case, brought on behalf of six anonymous servicemen who believe they were made ill by the vaccine and for all of those "similarly situated," is set for oral arguments in May. Two federal judges have suggested that the military will be held accountable if it is using soldiers to test an investigational drug without their informed consent. Pentagon officials seemed poised to stop the program before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks gave it a reprieve. In December, the Pentagon agreed to buy an additional 245 million doses of BioPort's vaccine. The Defense Department and other federal agencies have worked to find a new anthrax vaccine that will produce fewer side effects. Horjus said her decision to refuse the BioPort vaccine was based largely on research and observation. Her estranged husband took the shots before deploying to Saudi Arabia and became ill with a fever and lung congestion. She said she read everything she could about the vaccine, doing what the military expects a good soldier to do -- "use your head." Horjus said she became convinced that the BioPort vaccine was unsafe and experimental, its effects on women of childbearing age unknown. She and others were upset by a case that drew wide attention in November, when a coroner ruled that "post-vaccine" problems may have contributed to the death of Army Spec. Rachel Lacy. Army Lt. Gen. James B. Peake of the U.S. Army Medical Command sent a memo to commanders in February mentioning Lacy's death and telling them to be alert for adverse reactions. "The overwhelming majority of immunizations are followed by mild symptoms. . . . Unfortunately, the U.S. Army lost a valuable soldier in April, 2003, a month after receiving five vaccinations during mobilization," Peake wrote. "Although the evidence was inconclusive, medical experts determined that vaccination may have contributed to her death." Adding to Horjus's concern were reports of two airmen at Seymour Johnson who became seriously ill after receiving the shots. One soldier said in an interview she has suffered lightheadedness, night sweats and "grayouts" since receiving three of the six required shots. She asked that her name not be used because of fears that it could hurt her effort to get specialized treatment at a Walter Reed Army Medical Center vaccine clinic.

"Before these shots, I was a normal, healthy 20-year-old," she said. "So far, I've dodged the fourth shot, but if they try to make me take it, I'll be traveling down Jessica Horjus's path." Horjus and the two sick soldiers have become part of Airola's outreach network. She directs soldiers and their families to medical information and counsels soldiers preparing to refuse the vaccine. Many, she said, write letters to their commanders explaining that they are willing to deploy, even to indemnify the military against any possible anthrax exposure they might suffer on the battlefield, but "they just don't want to take these shots." At Fort Campbell, Ky., Army Sgt. Richard Norris, 27, is awaiting punishment for refusing the shots. When his unit of the 101st Airborne Division left for Iraq in February 2003, Norris was sent anyway, with no vaccine -- and no questions asked. He returned in December to find himself still flagged as "punishment pending," a status that has "put my whole career basically on pause. "I've served my country for seven years," said Norris, a Seventh-Day Adventist who tried unsuccessfully to get a religious exemption from the vaccine program. "Refusing this vaccine is the first bad thing I've ever done. It wasn't even necessary to have this vaccine, and still I'm going to be punished." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28133-2004Mar26.html (Return to Articles and Documents List) Washington Post March 28, 2004 Pg. 4

Defense Panel Faults Nuclear Plans Weapons Should Address Threats From 'Rogue States,' Task Force Says By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer A prestigious Defense Department panel has recommended major changes to the United States' nuclear arsenal, saying the current plans to refurbish the existing weapons stockpile will not protect the nation from new threats from rogue states and terrorist groups. A task force of the Defense Science Board said it is "most urgent" to create strong defenses against these new threats. In a report distributed inside the Pentagon last month, it said U.S. strategic forces should emphasize smaller nuclear warheads and should arm the nation's 50 giant Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles with conventional warheads to allow a wide variety of options for targeting hostile forces. "The nuclear weapons program as currently conceived -- a program focused primarily on refurbishing the [current] stockpile -- will not meet the country's future needs," the DSB group said in its study, made public last week by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. "Nuclear weapons are needed that produce much lower collateral damage," the panel said, indicating the need for greater precision, reduced radioactivity and the ability to dig deep into the ground to get hard targets. The DSB recommendations come at a time when the Bush administration is struggling to determine the future size and makeup of the current U.S. nuclear stockpile of about 6,000 warheads, an issue that has been pending for more than two years. At a Senate Armed Services subcommittee meeting this past Tuesday, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said he hoped the plan, which was due to be sent to Congress last month, would be submitted soon. The DSB study recommended that the United States' high-yield nuclear warheads, now being refurbished to last another two decades, be reduced. It said the nation should procure special-purpose nonnuclear weapons; develop a new, submarine-launched nonnuclear missile; and study development of new sensors that could find small, moving and hidden targets. The DSB report also sharply criticized current U.S. intelligence capabilities. It said intelligence agencies have "not developed the resources to adequately understand the leadership culture and values of its potential adversaries, particularly rogue states and terrorist organizations." It cited specifically the erosion of "our understanding of North Korean goals and tactics under Kim Jong Il" and "distinctions among the diverse elements of al Qaeda," Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. The DSB is highly influential within the Pentagon, and many of its past recommendations have been the basis for changes in U.S. military policies. This study's critique of intelligence carries additional weight, because one of the task force's co-chairmen was retired Adm. Dennis Blair, who worked at the CIA during the Clinton administration and retired in 2002 after serving as commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific. The other co-chairmen were retired Gen. Michael Carns, a former Air Force vice chief of staff, and Vincent Vitto, president of the Draper Laboratory, a nonprofit research institution that has played a significant role in defense activities.

William Schneider Jr., the DSB chairman, wrote that the task force recommendations to senior Defense Department officials are "fully justified and actionable," and that the potential threat "demands that we consider solutions that go beyond 'improvements on the margin.' " The DSB task force said that while it could take decades to build defenses against all weapons of mass destruction, it is more practical and "most urgent to create strong defenses against rogue states and terrorist organizations." Central to that approach is attacking and killing leaders of those groups. That is a different strategy than when dealing with an enemy with an established government, where the primary mission is "to disable the adversary leadership's ability to carry out its responsibilities," the report said. In Iraq, the task force said the "deck of cards" leaders, including former president Saddam Hussein, could not be found during the fighting and that weapons of mass destruction have not been discovered. "These physically small entities are essentially impossible to find without in situ [on site], intrusive sensors and probably HUMINT [human intelligence] as well," the panel said. "There has not been enough progress to date given the post-September 11 need for such systems." To find such future targets, the panel said new technology is required that would feature sensors that could be placed on the ground, including devices to be installed by spies that would tag vehicles electronically to allow for tracking, locating and targeting weapons at far distances. Because the targets would have to be able to be struck within a short time frame, the panel said the United States needs to develop a new cruise missile that could be launched from an offshore submarine and hit a target 1,500 miles away in 15 minutes. In addition, it proposed that the Air Force keep the 50 Peacekeeper ICBMs now set for deactivation and redeploy them to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral in Florida for use with conventional warheads. "These weapons would give the U.S. a 30-minute response capability for strategic strike worldwide," the panel said, noting it would cost less than $1 billion for development and deployment and could be ready by 2010. "Future presidents should have strategic strike choices between massive conventional strikes and today's relatively large, high-fallout weapons delivered primarily by ballistic missiles," the study said. "While we could previously execute some military operations only with nuclear weapons," the panel wrote, "we can now execute many of these with highly precise conventional weaponry." Among its recommendations in the nonnuclear area is development of so-called "interrogation rounds" or warheads filled with sensors that penetrate hidden bunkers and stay in place where they land, sending back information to guide in more powerful missiles. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30154-2004Mar27.html (Return to Articles and Documents List) Los Angeles Times March 29, 2004

Musharraf Has Rumsfeld's Support In Nuclear Case Defense chief doesn't believe Pakistan's leader was involved in selling weapons technology. By Chuck Neubauer, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday that there was no reason to believe that Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, was involved in the nuclear black-market network operated by the country's former top atomic scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan. "I do not believe that there's any evidence or any suggestion that President Musharraf was involved," Rumsfeld said on ABC's "This Week." Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, is believed to have personally made millions of dollars from the illicit sales of nuclear components and technology to nations such as Libya, Iran and North Korea. His network received $100 million from Libya alone for the equipment and technology to make nuclear weapons, U.S. officials have said. Last month, Pakistani television showed Khan seeking forgiveness from Musharraf. Khan admitted that he had made the deals, which he said had not been approved by the Pakistani government. Critics have asked whether high-ranking members of the military may have known about the sales. Musharraf had been a general and Pakistan's military chief of staff before seizing power in a coup in 1999. Rumsfeld said he could not rule out that there might have been some high-level military involvement in the sales, "because you can't prove a negative." "But if you're asking me, do I think Musharraf, either now or when he was head of the military, was engaged with that … I have no reason and have seen no evidence to suggest it," he said.

In an interview taped Friday in Islamabad and broadcast with Rumsfeld's appearance on "This Week," Musharraf told ABC that his critics were wrong to suggest any military complicity in the illegal sales. "Neither the military nor the government was involved," he said. "It was the individual." Musharraf downplayed the damage done by Khan's illicit sales of nuclear technology. "People are, I think, over-assessing the physical damage of the proliferation that he has done. It is a highly technical issue," he said, noting that it is not easy to produce a nuclear device. He said that even if an individual had a nuclear bomb, it could not be detonated without the expertise for a triggering mechanism. "If I hand over a missile or a bomb to any extremist, believe me, he can do nothing about it. He cannot explode it," Musharraf said. Rumsfeld said there was "no question but that A.Q. Khan has damaged the civilized world by engaging in the proliferation of nuclear technologies, and doing it systematically, and doing it aggressively, and doing it with multiple countries over a sustained period of time." Musharraf denied that he had a deal with President Bush whereby the United States would go easy on Khan's illegal network in return for a crackdown by the Pakistani military on suspected Al Qaeda guerrillas on its border with Afghanistan. "There is no deal whatsoever," Musharraf said. "This is all humbug. There is just no deal." On Sunday, Pakistan announced that it would begin withdrawing troops from its border with Afghanistan, saying that the forces had succeeded in chasing down suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban militants. The operation in South Waziristan, a largely lawless province in western Pakistan, began almost two weeks ago, with Musharraf hinting that a "high-value target" was in the area. As time passed, it became apparent that no top Al Qaeda leaders had been captured or were among those killed, and that any important figures had escaped. This month, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced that the United States planned to give Pakistan easier access to weapons and military equipment by designating the country as a major non-NATO ally. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-rumsfeld29mar29,1,5790499.story?coll=la-headlines-world (Return to Articles and Documents List) Los Angeles Times March 28, 2004 Pg. 1

Iraqi Defector's Tales Bolstered U.S. Case For War Colin Powell presented the U.N. with details on mobile germ factories, which came from a now-discredited source known as 'Curveball.' By Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, Times Staff Writers WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's prewar claims that Saddam Hussein had built a fleet of trucks and railroad cars to produce anthrax and other deadly germs were based chiefly on information from a now-discredited Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball," according to current and former intelligence officials. U.S. officials never had direct access to the defector and didn't even know his real name until after the war. Instead, his story was provided by German agents, and his file was so thick with details that American officials thought it confirmed long-standing suspicions that the Iraqis had developed mobile germ factories to evade arms inspections. Curveball's story has since crumbled under doubts raised by the Germans and the scrutiny of U.S. weapons hunters, who have come to see his code name as particularly apt, given the problems that beset much of the prewar intelligence collection and analysis. U.N. weapons inspectors hypothesized that such trucks might exist, officials said. They then asked former exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, a bitter enemy of Hussein, to help search for intelligence supporting their theory. Soon after, a young chemical engineer emerged in a German refugee camp and claimed that he had been hired out of Baghdad University to design and build biological warfare trucks for the Iraqi army. Based largely on his account, President Bush and his aides repeatedly warned of the shadowy germ trucks, dubbed "Winnebagos of Death" or "Hell on Wheels" in news accounts, and they became a crucial part of the White House case for war — including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's dramatic presentation to the U.N. Security Council just weeks before the war. Only later, U.S. officials said, did the CIA learn that the defector was the brother of one of Chalabi's top aides, and begin to suspect that he might have been coached to provide false information. Partly because of that, some U.S. intelligence officials and congressional investigators fear that the CIA may have inadvertently conjured up and then chased a phantom weapons system. David Kay, who resigned in January as head of the CIA-led group created to find illicit weapons in Iraq, said that of all the intelligence failures in Iraq, the case of Curveball was particularly troubling.

"This is the one that's damning," he said. "This is the one that has the potential for causing the largest havoc in the sense that it really looks like a lack of due diligence and care in going forward." Kay said in an interview that the defector "was absolutely at the heart of a matter of intense interest to us." But Curveball turned out to be an "out-and-out fabricator," he added. Last May, the CIA announced that it had found two of the suspect trucks in northern Iraq, but the agency later backtracked. However, in the absence of evidence to support many of its prewar claims, the Bush administration has continued to cling to the possibility that biowarfare trucks might still exist. Vice President Dick Cheney as recently as January referred to the trucks as "conclusive" proof that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction. CIA Director George J. Tenet later told a Senate committee that he called Cheney to warn him that the evidence was increasingly suspect. Tenet gave the first hint of the underlying problem in a speech at Georgetown University on Feb. 5. "I must tell you we are finding discrepancies in some claims made by human sources" about mobile biological weapons production, he said. "Because we lack direct access to the most important sources on this question, we have as yet been unable to resolve the differences." U.S. and British intelligence officials have acknowledged since major combat ended in Iraq that lies or distortions by Iraqi opposition groups in exile contributed to numerous misjudgments about Iraq's suspected weapons programs. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress is blamed most often, but the rival Iraqi National Accord and various Kurdish groups also were responsible for sending dubious defectors to Western intelligence, officials say. Still, the Curveball case may be especially damaging because no other credible defector has provided firsthand confirmation that Iraq modified vehicles to produce germ agents, and no proof has been found before or after the end of major combat. Iraqi officials interrogated since the war have all denied that such a program existed. The story of Curveball is now under close review by an internal panel at the CIA, as well as House and Senate oversight committees. All are seeking to determine why so much of the prewar intelligence now appears seriously flawed. Richard J. Kerr, a former CIA deputy director who is leading the internal review, defended the agency's handling of the case. He said there were strong reasons to believe that the vehicles existed because the defector's information was consistent with years of intelligence on Iraq's covert efforts to obtain chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. "It was detailed and specific and made a lot of sense," Kerr said. He said the CIA believed that Iraq was developing and concealing banned weapons programs in civilian chemical and pharmaceutical facilities. "You get reporting on mobile production facilities … and you say it makes some sense." Nor did Kerr fault the agency for relying so heavily on an anonymous source whom it could not interview. In this case, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, known as the BND, repeatedly rejected CIA requests to meet Curveball, saying it needed to protect its source. But U.S. and German officials said the BND furnished its file on the defector to U.S. authorities and at times had him answer specific questions from U.S. intelligence. "Intelligence is often based on information where you can't go back and talk to the source or verify it," Kerr said. "So you turn to the basic questions. 'Does it make sense? Is it logical? Does it appear he could have been at the right place at the right time to know these things?' " The defector met those tests, he said. One focus of the ongoing investigations is whether the CIA should have known Curveball was not credible. A former U.S. official who has reviewed the classified file said the BND warned the CIA last spring that it had "various problems with the source." Die Zeit, a German newsweekly, first reported the warning last August. The official said the BND sent the warning after Powell first described the biowarfare trucks in detail to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003. It's unclear whether the German warning arrived before the war began on March 20 last year. "You can imagine the consternation it kicked off," the official said. "It suggested that what [the Germans had] been passing to us was false. They were backing away." Mark Mansfield, a CIA spokesman, declined to comment Friday on that charge or questions about the case. An official at BND headquarters in Berlin, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also declined to answer questions. "We believed that Iraq had these mobile biological facilities," the official said. Although previous CIA reports had referred to the biowarfare trucks, Powell's U.N. presentation put them in the spotlight. Citing "eyewitness accounts," he called them "one of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq." "We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails," Powell said. He showed what he called "highly detailed and extremely accurate" diagrams of how the trucks were configured, and warned that they could spew enough anthrax or botulinus toxin "in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people."

But Kay, who sought to confirm Curveball's claims in Iraq after the end of major combat, said Powell's account was "disingenuous." Kay added: "If Powell had said to the Security Council: 'It's one source, we never actually talked to him, and we don't know his name,' as he's describing this, I think people would have laughed us out of court." Powell assured U.N. diplomats that two other Iraqi sources, who he said were "in a position to know," had corroborated the "eyewitness account." The CIA later said those reports arrived in December 2000 and mid-2002. Kay said the debriefing files on the pair showed that they never had direct contact with the biowarfare trucks. "None of them claimed to have seen them," he said. "They said they were aware of the mobile program. They had heard there was a mobile program." CIA files showed that another Iraqi defector, an engineer who had worked with Curveball, specifically denied that they had worked on such facilities, Kay said. Powell did not cite that defector. The CIA acknowledged last month that a fourth defector whom Powell cited at the U.N., a former major in Iraq's intelligence service, had lied when he said that Baghdad had built mobile research laboratories to test biological agents. The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency twice debriefed that defector in early 2002 and reported his claims. But it then concluded that he did not have firsthand information and probably was coached by Chalabi's exile group. In May 2002, the agency posted a "fabrication notice" on a classified computer network to warn other U.S. intelligence agencies that the defector had lied. But CIA officials said the notice was overlooked, and his information was cited both in Powell's speech and the CIA's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate to Congress. The Curveball case began in 1992, when weapons inspectors from the U.N. Special Commission in Iraq, frustrated at their failure to find Iraq's germ weapon factories, wrote an internal report in which they speculated that Baghdad could have hidden small, mobile versions in modified vans or trucks. Based on that hypothesis, the U.N. weapons hunters and U.S. intelligence analysts studying U-2 spy plane and high-altitude satellite images of Iraq were instructed to watch for a potential "signature" of a germ factory on wheels — pairs of 35-foot trucks, working in tandem, parked parallel, with communications gear, high security and a water source. Eavesdropping on Iraqi military communications had already proved that they were moving sensitive documents to avoid detection. U.N. inspectors also knew that Iraq used tanker trucks to fill chemical warheads on the battlefield in the 1980s, raising suspicions that it might also have produced chemical or biological agents in trucks. In 1994, Israel's military intelligence passed word that Iraq was hiding poison factories in commercial trucks — red-and-white "Tip Top Ice Cream" trucks and green moving vans from "Sajida Transport," named for the dictator's wife. The U.N. inspectors concluded that neither company existed, and some inspectors were skeptical about the whole idea. Raymond A. Zilinskas, who helped inspect 61 biological facilities in Iraq in 1994, said he had argued that biowarfare trucks were difficult to build, dangerous to operate and hard to hide. "They just didn't make sense from a technical or a security viewpoint," he said. But the theory gained new credence when Gen. Amir Saadi, then a senior Iraqi weapons official, told U.N. inspectors in August 1995 that he had proposed building germ-producing trucks and other mobile facilities in 1988, chiefly to avoid air attack, but that regime officials rejected his concept as impractical. Saadi, who became science advisor to Hussein and chief liaison to U.N. inspectors before the war, turned himself in to U.S. forces in Baghdad on April 12, 2003, after telling German TV that Iraq had no illicit weapons. He remains in U.S. custody. Saadi's 1995 statement rang alarms at the CIA and elsewhere, however. Intelligence reports soon referred to a possible series of three trucks that would operate as a single biological agent factory. One truck would carry fermenters, another would carry mixing and preparation tanks, and the third, equipment to process and store the product. U.N. inspectors stepped up their search in response. So did Western spy services. In 1996, Holland's National Intelligence and Security Agency, known as the BVD, sent word that an informant code-named "Fulcrum," a former Iraqi intelligence officer, had supplied a list of government-issued, blue-and-white, sequentially numbered license plates that supposedly were used on the germ trucks. But the inspectors could never find licenses with those numbers. Then, in March 1997, a U-2 spy plane that the U.S. government operated for the U.N. photographed three or four large box-type trucks parked outside a garage used by Iraq's intelligence service, the Mukhabarat. U.N. teams swooped in — and found that the trucks were filled with construction material.

The U.N. team members then asked headquarters in New York to let them run random roadblocks in Iraq. They also asked for "hot pursuit" authority, with fast cars and helicopters capable of spraying foam on the roads, in case they had to chase a fleeing germ truck. Officials in New York quickly rejected both proposals. "We were told that was insane," said Scott Ritter, a former chief U.N. inspector who headed a special investigations unit and who served as the U.N. team's liaison to U.S. intelligence. "And they were right." But the U.N. inspections operation in New York, then headed by Australian diplomat Richard Butler, did approve another plan. The inspectors long had relied on intelligence from sympathetic governments and dissident groups. Chalabi had lobbied Washington for years to overthrow Hussein and claimed that he had spies inside the Baghdad regime. In December 1997, Ritter said, he and his deputy, a former British army major attached to the U.N. team, flew to London to ask Chalabi for help. They met for three hours over dinner at Chalabi's Mayfair residence with the influential Iraqi exile and Ahmed Allawi, who headed intelligence operations for the Iraqi National Congress. "Chalabi outlined what he could do for us," Ritter recalled. "His intelligence guy outlined their sources and said he had people inside the government. They told us they had the run of Iraq. Just tell them what we needed. So we outlined the gaps in our understanding of the Iraqi program, including the mobile bioweapons labs. Basically, we gave them a shopping list." "They began feeding us information," Ritter said. "We got hand-drawn maps, handwritten statements and other stuff flowing in. At first blush, it looked good. But nothing panned out. Most of it just regurgitated what we'd given them. And the data that was new never checked out." Haider Musawi, an INC media liaison in Baghdad, said in a telephone interview Saturday that he could not confirm the meetings had occurred. Asked about INC ties to Curveball, he replied, "I really can't think of such a defector." U.S. officials say Curveball apparently showed up in Germany in 1998, but it is unclear how he got there. The Times was unable to ascertain Curveball's real name or his current location. What is clear is that by 2000, Curveball had provided a vast array of convincing detail about the illicit program he claimed to manage. He outlined how each office was set up and the names on each door. He described how walls were moved to help hide trucks. He identified several dozen fellow team members — even a lowly aide who rented their cars. He provided diagrams showing how stainless steel tanks, pumps, compressors and other parts were configured on nickel-plated flooring in each truck. U.N. weapons hunters who returned to Iraq in November 2002 considered the trucks a "high priority," said a former inspector who helped supervise more than 70 raids for evidence of germ weapons in the four months before the war. They checked every site Curveball had identified, as well as others picked by U.S. intelligence. They tested waste lines in food-testing vans, took samples from refrigerator trucks, and searched for truck parts, blueprints, purchase orders or other evidence in factories, laboratories and elsewhere. "We didn't find anything," the former inspector said. After Powell's U.N. speech, inspectors demanded that Baghdad identify every mobile facility it owned. In letters delivered on March 3 and March 15, just days before the war started, Iraqi officials handed over detailed descriptions, backed by 39 photographs and four videotapes, of mobile disease analysis labs, mobile military morgues, X-ray trucks, military bakery vans, mobile ice factories, refrigerated drug and food transport trucks and other special vehicles. Some had stainless steel equipment that appeared similar to the diagrams Powell had shown the U.N. After major combat ended, the U.S. forces recovered two suspect trailer trucks in northern Iraq. A CIA report last May 28 concluded that two trucks "probably" were designed to produce lethal toxins in liquid slurry, and Bush said U.S. forces thus had "found" Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But Pentagon analysts warned that the trucks probably produced hydrogen for artillery weather balloons, and the CIA backtracked. It now says there is "no consensus" on the trucks' use. During the summer, Kay's investigators visited Curveball's parents and brother in Baghdad, as well as his former work sites. They determined that he was last in his class at the University of Baghdad, not first as he had claimed. They learned he had been fired from his job and jailed for embezzlement before he fled Iraq. "He was wrong about so much," Kay recalled. "Physical descriptions he gave for buildings and sites simply didn't match reality. Things started to fall apart." Chalabi, now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, retains strong support in the White House. He was a guest of First Lady Laura Bush at the president's State of the Union address last January, and his organization still receives several hundred thousand dollars a month from the Pentagon to help collect intelligence in Iraq. Chalabi says he has been unfairly blamed for the failure to find germ trucks or any other unconventional weapons in Iraq since major combat ended. He blames the CIA instead.

"Intelligence people are supposed to do a better job for their country, and their government did not do such a good job," he told CBS' "60 Minutes" in a recent interview. "This is a ridiculous situation." INC defectors were always accused of having an ax to grind, he said. "So why did the CIA believe them so much?" Times staff writer Jeffrey Fleishman in Berlin contributed to this report. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-curveball28mar28,1,2654.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage (Return to Articles and Documents List) Washington Post March 29, 2004 Pg. 21

Nuclear Security Decisions Are Shrouded In Secrecy Agency Withholds Unclassified Information By R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post Staff Writer Nineteen men in four squads. That's the size of the terrorist threat that some nuclear critics say armed guards at U.S. nuclear power plants and weapons facilities should be able to rebuff. The figure is pegged to the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda assaults on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The Bush administration has updated a much weaker 1980s-era standard, but government and congressional officials say the presumed attack still involves considerably fewer than 19 terrorists -- and that means requiring a smaller guard force than critics say is necessary. A legal dispute related to this standard has now arisen, but -- as in other recent discussions of the administration's response to terrorism threats -- the squabbling is occurring almost entirely outside public view. The immediate issue is an unclassified request by a nuclear power plant operator for an exemption from certain parts of the new security requirements. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has deemed the operator's request sensitive, and declared that its release would bring criminal prosecution. Critics who allege the standards are already too lax have filed a challenge to the exemption request, which the commission has also declared is too sensitive to be released. It is but one example of the manner in which post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism controls -- even those concerning unclassified information -- have altered the landscape of public debate about security matters. Civil defense arrangements that were once the subject of mostly open rulemaking or debate are now often decided under a cloak of secrecy covering all but industry and government participants. The result has been to complicate efforts to hold officials accountable for their decisions, especially in the counterterrorism field, say advocates of open policymaking. "There has been a proliferation of new controls on unclassified information," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Government Secrecy Project at the Federation of American Scientists. "This is where the public is at a disadvantage," because few mechanisms are available to challenge these controls or to ensure that public representatives have access comparable to what industry routinely gains. In the nuclear site security case, Duke Power asked the NRC to waive certain security precautions, normally required wherever more than a bomb's worth of special nuclear materials are present. The request involves the planned shipment next spring of French-made nuclear fuel rods containing plutonium to its plants in North and South Carolina, where they will be stored and then burned in reactors. The challenge has been filed by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, with technical advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Although UCS scientist Edwin Lyman, who has a security clearance, read the exemption request after signing a non-disclosure statement, neither he nor the environmental group has been able to learn exactly what the NRC's security standards are. Lyman says he is willing to keep whatever he learns confidential, but that without knowing more, he cannot fully assess the proposal or effectively express concerns about the underlying standard. But the NRC, ruling in a Feb. 18 decision, said that although Duke Power has a "need to know," the environmental group does not. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a longtime critic of nuclear power, has complained that the NRC barred the groups from learning the same information it shared not only with Duke Power but also with the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group that has lobbied against stiffer guard force requirements. In a March 18 letter to the NRC, institute President Joe Colvin said the group was meeting "almost daily" with the commission staff to discuss the security standard, now undergoing a final government review. A senior NRC official, speaking on condition that he not be named, asserted that "the public does not have a need to know [the postulated terrorist threat] and doesn't, for the most part, have security clearances. . . . There is no way you can bring the public into that discussion." He said the critics "are unlikely to have anything but disdain for anything that we do, so I don't know what we can gain from that." Duke Power maintains that its power plants are well protected, and

that its security exemption request is reasonable, given the difficulty of diverting plutonium contained in the bulky fuel rods. Nuclear Energy Institute Vice President Steve Floyd is skeptical of the critics' demands for even controlled access to threat information. "You have to realize what their agenda is -- to drive costs up to the point where nuclear [power] is no longer feasible," Floyd said. But Aftergood of the Government Secrecy Project said that "it is the public that has to deal with the consequences" of a nuclear site security breach, and so it is entitled to participate more fully in the debate. "Fundamentally, the NRC policy views members of the public as a threat," Aftergood said. The NRC is not alone in imposing its own, new controls on unclassified information. The Department of Homeland Security has promised not to disclose security data furnished by companies on their "critical infrastructure or protected systems," a potentially broad category of data. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has adopted a slightly different policy to shield what it calls critical "energy infrastructure" data: It will release the data to recipients who sign a non-disclosure pledge. These and other government offices are essentially taking their cues from a White House directive in March 2002, which encouraged government officials to treat all unclassified security-related information as sensitive data not subject to public release. But the NRC policy is one of the most expansive. The commission recently threatened staff members at a watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), with criminal prosecution because they published their own detailed critique of security at Entergy Nuclear's two reactors at Indian Point in New York. "The Commission is concerned that a public discussion of some of those issues would not be in the best interests of the United States," NRC Secretary Annette L. Vietti-Cook wrote to the group in the fall, noting problems related to discussion in the critique of the number of attackers a plant might have to fend off and particular security weaknesses. Roy P. Zimmerman, director of the NRC's office of nuclear security, subsequently wrote that POGO's critique -- which the group says was based solely on interviews it conducted with people who participated in or observed Indian Point security drills -- had been deemed "safeguards information" protected by federal law. Such laws, he noted, apply to "any person . . . who produces, receives, or acquires" such data, no matter how they got it. In an apparent Catch-22, Zimmerman said the commission could not, however, specify what information it wanted deleted from the critique. That prompted POGO's lawyer, David C. Vladeck, to allege that the NRC was trying to "silence" the group. Eventually, the NRC, which denied the accusation, agreed to describe the offending information in general terms, and POGO released a new critique containing passages it had rephrased. But, in an illustration of the challenges the government faces in trying to quash public discussion of sensitive but unclassified information, the original POGO critique remains posted on an independent Web site devoted to disseminating whatever officials seek to censor (www.thememoryhole.org). Since Sept. 11, 2001, many bureaucrats have been using heightened security concerns to "hide their inadequacies," said Danielle Brian, POGO's executive director. "It has gone far, far beyond what is reasonable." Aftergood similarly warns that the government has "cast too broad a net and . . . failed to provide an internal self-check." The sole office for policing the government's disclosure of security-related information was created in an era when data were either classified or subject to public release, and has no jurisdiction over the burgeoning realm of sensitive but unclassified information, he said. J. William Leonard, who heads that office -- the Information Security Oversight Office, an arm of the National Archives -- confirms Aftergood's account. Although making no comment on specific disputes, he said that in many instances, "sensitive but unclassified" is a label without meaning that is misused by officials who lack the proper "training, background or understanding" to decide what to withhold. Leonard said that strictly applying a "need to know" test can sometimes exclude important players whose valuable insight is not foreseen. Leonard gave a speech last year that he says is still relevant, in which he noted that the government needs to create "a seamless process" for sharing or withholding information, yet "we are . . . quite possibly adding new seams every day" by not enforcing a reasonable, government-wide policy. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31788-2004Mar28.html (Return to Articles and Documents List) Chicago Tribune March 28, 2004

U.S. War On Anthrax Has Its Risks Rush to stock new vaccine has scientists wary By Peter Gorner, Tribune science reporter

Some scientists are questioning a U.S. government plan to spend as much as $1.4 billion on an unlicensed, experimental anthrax vaccine to be stockpiled in case bioterrorists attack American cities. Although the vaccine has been tested in animals, testing in humans is in its early phases and the vaccine has not yet demonstrated its effectiveness, making the purchasing plan premature, according to critics. But the Bush administration, as a follow-up to its promise to have enough smallpox vaccine on hand for every American, said it hopes that within two years the country will have sufficient quantities of the new anthrax vaccine to inoculate 25 million people. That, along with the storage of antibiotics that already have proved their effectiveness against anthrax spores, could serve as countermeasures against a feared biological agent. "As the lead federal agency for public health and medical response, we are moving forward to ensure our nation is protected against anthrax," said Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. But an anthrax expert, Dr. Meryl Nass, of Bar Harbor, Maine, cautioned that the public "should not be misled that this vaccine is an improvement to the currently licensed vaccine. "This one is definitely more pure, but unfortunately its purity has not been shown to improve safety or effectiveness," said Nass, a former government consultant who led the campaign against the existing vaccine after getting reports from military personnel of mystifying and serious side effects. After a terrorist attack, the U.S. plan calls for the entire population of a city to be inoculated with the new vaccine, while also taking antibiotics until immunity develops. After that, with regular booster shots, people theoretically would be immune to anthrax, even if spores lingered for years, as they have been shown to do. Nass said that most "shocking" is the government's contention that the new vaccine would enable cities contaminated with anthrax to be habitable. "Where's the science behind that? It's the biggest, most bogus thing of all," she said. The only currently licensed anthrax vaccine in the U.S. is a mixture of proteins produced by a weakened form of Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes the deadly disease in animals and people. Developed for animal-hide workers in the 1950s and used primarily by the military, the vaccine requires six injections over 18 months and has been associated with severe side effects. The licensed anthrax vaccine became the subject of bad publicity and litigation because of the Pentagon's insistence on mandatory vaccination of troops. The vaccine's reputation never recovered. During the anthrax-letters panic of 2001, nearly all of the postal workers at risk refused the vaccine when it was offered. Nonetheless, some skeptics are questioning what they perceive as the rush by the government to buy several million doses of the new vaccine, called rPA102, before clinical trials are completed and its safety and effectiveness evaluated. Also being questioned is the choice of the main manufacturer, VaxGen Inc. of Brisbane, Calif., a company whose AIDS vaccine failed inclinical trials in 2003. "Once again, VaxGen has managed to leverage few scientific data to capture a significant amount of federal dollars," said Dr. Steven Wolinsky, an AIDS researcher and chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Feinberg Medical School at Northwestern University. "Most of us in the scientific community agree there is meager scientific evidence to support this effort. As a clinician, I would not offer the vaccine to people exposed to anthrax spores without providing them with concomitant drug treatment." More promising anthrax vaccines are in the pipeline, but they may fail to attract commercial developers because the government already has made up its mind, some experts contend. They also warn of another potential anthrax vaccine boondoggle that would make the legal, medical and ethical disputes over the existing vaccine, BioThrax, pale by comparison. Bidding will close April 16 on a contract for 75 million doses of the rPA102 vaccine that is expected to be awarded to VaxGen and Avecia Ltd, a privately held company based in Manchester, England. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, "the new vaccine has already shown to be stronger and more effective than the vaccine being used today. It will require fewer doses per individual to provide immunity against the effects of anthrax inhalation." The firms already have contracts--VaxGen for $80.3 million and Avecia for $71.3 million--to each produce 3 million doses and conduct human trials to test the vaccine. The new vaccine is a purified protein designed to stimulate the body to produce antibodies to neutralize the most dangerous part of anthrax--called protective antigen, or PA.

"The way anthrax works is that one part attaches to your cell and the other part [the protective antigen] gets flipped on the inside to have the toxic effect," said Dr. Craig E. Smith, representing the Bioterrorism Work Group of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. "This vaccine stimulates antibodies that destroy the attachment component so the toxic part can't get into where it needs to do its dirty work. It just gets washed out of your system without any problem," Smith said. "If a bomb blew up and the cloud spread anthrax through the city, we could follow the cloud and vaccinate the 2 million people downstream who may take weeks to months to manifest the disease." Smith called the new vaccine "a no-brainer. A win-win situation." VaxGen recently reported that the first phase of human testing--with 100 volunteers age 18 to 49--showed that antibody responses to higher doses of rPA102 conferred protection within the same range as the existing vaccine. Dr. Harry L. Keyserling, professor of pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine, conducted the clinical trial with colleagues from St. Louis University and Baylor and Johns Hopkins Universities. Local reactions, mainly arm pain, were more common with the old vaccine, but short-lived systemic reactions, mostly headache and fatigue, were more than twice as common (39 percent versus 18 percent) with the new vaccine. "Side effects were mild, nothing that would interfere with everyday activity. Further studies will continue to monitor reactions and adverse effects," said VaxGen spokeswoman Kesinee Yip. But systemic reactions worry some specialists because long-term effects of the vaccine are virtually unstudied and initial systemic reactions--reactions away from the injection site--could put people at high risk of chronic illness later. Published case reports have linked anthrax vaccine to a host of problems including chronic fatiguing illnesses, chronic pain syndromes and endocrine and autoimmune disorders. Another top government official insisted the new vaccine purchase plan is not precipitous and "was all done in a very measured, careful way. "There were multiple contracts doing the research to show that it was safe and stimulated the immune system against anthrax. Now comes the production capabilities to put it in place," said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "We now have enough smallpox vaccine to handle anything. But with anthrax vaccine, we had a gap," Fauci said. "We didn't have enough vaccine if, indeed, we had an attack on a city. Nor did we have enough to vaccinate first responders and others who might be doing the cleanups after an attack of anthrax." As with the current vaccine, the new vaccine was developed by bioweapons specialists at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick, Md. They successfully tested the vaccine for years in primates, officials said. "Almost two years ago, we started a strategic plan for developing countermeasures to high-risk agents--smallpox, anthrax, tularemia, plague, botulism toxins and the hemmorhagic fevers. This purchase is part of that," Fauci said. Others challenge that assertion, however. "The primary ingredient, PA [protective antigen] has significant toxicity. Since no immediate need exists, and testing has not been completed, why rush to order a huge stockpile of such a vaccine?" asked Nass."VaxGen is only at the Phase 1 stage, pre-efficacy testing. Why buy a huge amount of a product before the manufacturer has showed it will work? "Many things are dropped much later as a result of Phase 3 testing--like VaxGen's AIDS vaccine. Nothing should be purchased in bulk at this very early stage of testing," Nass said. http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/health/chi-0403280345mar28,1,1219783.story (Return to Articles and Documents List) Los Angeles Times March 27, 2004 Pg. 1

Iran Hiding Its Nuclear Activities, Report Says Tehran allegedly set up a panel to oversee such efforts after evidence of its cover-up emerged. By Douglas Frantz and Sonni Efron, Times Staff Writers ISTANBUL, Turkey — Senior Iranian officials are overseeing efforts to conceal key elements of the country's nuclear program from international inspectors, according to Western diplomats and an intelligence report. If the cover-up is confirmed, it would bolster the U.S. assertion that Iran is trying to hide a secret nuclear weapons program.

Iran set up a committee late last year to coordinate the concealment efforts after international inspectors uncovered evidence that the Islamic Republic had tried to hide aspects of its nuclear program, including secret research on advanced centrifuges that can produce weapons-grade uranium, according to the diplomats. A diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the committee's most pressing tasks include trying to hide nuclear evidence at nearly 300 locations around the country. The committee is said to be composed mainly of senior officials of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran who report to high-ranking government officials. Iran has said that it will deny access to some suspect sites by international inspectors, who are scheduled to continue their work today. Iran cited a continuing New Year holiday as justification for barring the inspectors. A Bush administration official said the United States had received the intelligence report — prepared by a country other than the United States — within the last month and believes it to be credible. Washington would probably portray any Iranian cover-up as smoking-gun evidence of a nuclear weapons program. The U.S. is likely to use any such evidence to prod the Europeans, who have been pursuing an engagement strategy with Tehran, to take a harder line at the June meeting in Vienna of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA. "The report is being viewed seriously because it originates from outside U.S. intelligence sources," said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It has contributed to a greater sense of frustration, both in the U.S. and within the IAEA." The Western diplomat who first described the new intelligence report is not American. He also provided a written analysis of the report to The Times, but not the actual document. "The [Iranian] committee is making a thorough and systematic examination of all uranium conversion facilities, centrifuge component manufacturing plants and other secret installations to locate poor concealment," the analysis read. "It will then order improved concealment measures with a view to making them hermetic before inspections resume." IAEA inspectors already have discovered elaborate efforts by Iranian authorities to conceal nuclear activities in recent months. At one site near Tehran, workers completely renovated a workshop in an unsuccessful attempt to hide evidence of uranium enrichment, according to an IAEA report. On March 13, the 35 countries on the IAEA board condemned Iran for withholding sensitive information from inspectors. Iran retaliated by immediately suspending inspections of its nuclear facilities, accusing the board of buckling under U.S. pressure. After negotiations with the nuclear watchdog, Iran agreed to allow inspectors to return today. But a diplomat involved in the process said Tehran was only allowing the team to visit locations previously identified as nuclear installations. Tehran, the diplomat said, is claiming that a clause in the agreement with the IAEA allows it to block additional inspections during holidays. "They said New Year's celebrations are continuing until sometime in April," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "There's nothing in the additional protocol that says you can't inspect on holidays," countered a second U.S. official who is involved with the Iranian nuclear issue. "The holiday is an excuse by Iran to cover up something." The anticipated delay makes it unlikely that the IAEA will have time to prepare a complete report on Iran's compliance with its disclosure requirements in time for the next scheduled agency board meeting in June, according to people familiar with the process. The intelligence report, which was prepared before Iran suspended inspections, said that the concealment committee was "formulating a contingency plan: thinking up reasons for delaying the inspectors' return to Iran, if it becomes necessary," according to the written analysis. A second foreign diplomat confirmed the substance of the report's central allegations about a focused effort by Iran to hide nuclear activities. The diplomat said there was independent evidence that Iran was still concealing some nuclear sites, adding that the IAEA learned of the committee's existence late last year. Pirooz Hosseini, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, said in a telephone interview Friday that charges of a cover-up were "totally baseless" and that Iran had disclosed all of its nuclear activities. "We have adopted a policy of full transparency, and we have declared all of our nuclear activities to the IAEA," Hosseini said. Iran has said its program is strictly intended to generate electricity, but a series of inspections by the IAEA over the last year has turned up evidence that the U.S. says points to a weapons program. Among the most troubling disclosures were the discovery of traces of weapons-grade uranium at two locations and Iran's failure to disclose that it had received centrifuge designs supplied by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who operated a black market in nuclear technology. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the IAEA, is scheduled to visit Tehran early next month to tell Iranian officials that they must disclose everything related to the country's nuclear program.

The IAEA declined to comment on ElBaradei's trip or the allegations that Iran was involved in a cover-up. The inspection team in Iran now is expected to visit a plant being built near Esfahan to produce uranium hexafluoride, which is used to fuel centrifuges that enrich uranium. The Iranians have said that the conversion plant was part of the civilian effort and that it has not become operational. But the intelligence report said that nuclear materials had been brought to the plant and it was started up in late February without notification to the IAEA, as required by regulations. "The dilemma facing the committee and Esfahan officials is how to conceal, post facto, the introduction of natural uranium from unknown sources, which apparently was undeclared," said the analysis of the report. Hosseini, the Iranian ambassador, said that there was no enrichment activity at the Esfahan plant and that it was still under full IAEA supervision. The United States is opposed to the Esfahan plant on the grounds that it would give Iran the ability to perfect technology for a full nuclear fuel cycle. That technology could be replicated for military purposes. In Washington, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council declined to comment on any intelligence. A senior administration official said only that "we would not find it entirely surprising, given Iran's pattern of deception." While insisting that Iran is violating its promises to cease all nuclear enrichment and cooperate with the IAEA, the Bush administration has softened its stance in an attempt to forge a united front with the Europeans. Britain, France and Germany have crafted a policy that would eventually give Iran trade concessions in exchange for compliance with the IAEA. The three allies rejected a U.S. bid in November to persuade the IAEA to refer Iran's nuclear activities to the U.N. Security Council for possible condemnation. A German Embassy spokesperson said the German government would wait until the next IAEA report, scheduled for May, is released before making any decisions. The administration now appears to be playing it uncharacteristically cool, waiting quietly in hopes that evidence of concealment will mount. The strategy aims at prompting ElBaradei and the Europeans to take the lead in demanding compliance from Tehran. The United States cannot hope to command a majority vote from the IAEA Board of Governors without the Europeans, but an IAEA tradition of unanimous board decisions makes it even more important to build a broad-based consensus. Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, said Iran was being treated softly because of fears among IAEA member countries that aggressive action would be seen as inspired solely by Washington. "The nonaligned movement is viewing any enforcement of the rules as being driven by the hidden hand of Uncle Sam, and as a result, if any country raises this they are a tool of the U.S. and they're dismissed," Sokolski said. Frantz reported from Istanbul and Efron from Washington. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-nukes27mar27,1,7108075.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage (Return to Articles and Documents List) Chicago Tribune March 28, 2004

Uranium From Congo Finds Way Into Market Untracked exports could be problem, UN watchdog says By Dino Mahtani, Reuters SHINKOLOBWE, Congo --A mine in Congo that provided uranium for the first atomic bombs is being illegally quarried and the potentially dangerous raw material exported without control, industry experts say. That rang alarm bells with the United Nations last week, and the UN nuclear watchdog said it had asked the government of the Congo for more information. "If there is the possibility that large quantities of uranium are being mined and exported, it is disturbing," said Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency. "[Congo] has an additional protocol with the IAEA which puts it under an obligation to report its uranium mining activities as well as its exports of uranium," Fleming added. Thousands of self-employed miners are pounding away at rocks and descending into makeshift shafts at Shinkolobwe, one of mineral-rich Congo's largest and oldest mines in the southeastern province of Katanga.

"Our union manages several thousand miners at Shinkolobwe. Our role is to manage the future training of these miners for whatever they end up doing," said Jean Marie Mujinga, who heads operations at Shinkolobwe for the Union for Artisanal Miners in Katanga. Mujinga said there were about 6,000 miners at the site. Discovered in the early 1900s and developed by Congo's then colonial master, Belgium, Shinkolobwe provided the uranium that was refined for the bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, near the end of World War II. After the war, its principal mine shaft was filled with concrete and its uranium concentrator abandoned by the Belgians, under pressure from the U.S. government. The U.S. wanted to remove a potential security threat once Congo gained independence in 1960. Today, the miners are digging up cobalt and copper compounds, in high demand on the world market, but the amalgamates contain significant traces of uranium, which can be processed into nuclear material in the hands of expert scientists. "They are inadvertently exporting raw uranium, which could find its way into the hands of countries that are capable of using it," said John Skinner, general manager of Swanepoel Enterprises, a South African farming and contract mining company that has been based in Likasi, an industrial town not far from Shinkolobwe, since the 1930s. Demand for cobalt, which is used in paints, batteries and newer generations of mobile phones, continues to remove compounds containing uranium out of Shinkolobwe. But scientists say that the threat of it ending up in a nuclear bomb is minimal. Only uranium which has been through several stages of refining and enrichment is usable in the core of a nuclear bomb, and experts say obtaining highly enriched uranium is the biggest obstacle to developing nuclear weapons. "The uranium from Shinkolobwe is mostly uranium-238, and therefore not immediately fissionable," said professor Fortunat Lumu, atomic energy general officer at Congo's Ministry of Scientific Research in the capital Kinshasa. "It could only be dangerous in the hands of those countries that have or are trying to develop expensive nuclear reactors and laser technologies that can process uranium-238 into highly radioactive materials," he said. Shinkolobwe was once prospected by North Korea, which sent a team of engineers to the site in 1999, only to be thrown out after Washington put pressure on Congo's government. Today, local residents say, it is Indian, Pakistani, Chinese and South Korean smelter operators who are buying up the amalgamate compounds for smelting in Likasi or for direct export. Francois Murphy in Vienna contributed to this report. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0403280364mar28,1,6508714.story (Return to Articles and Documents List) Pahrump Valley Times March 19,, 2004

Chemical, biological tests planned for NTS TESTS CONNECTED TO HOMELAND SECURITY; ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ADAMANT PUBLIC IS SAFE By MARK WAITE PVT The Nevada Test Site will be the testing ground for releases of chemical and biological materials, Nye County Commissioners were informed Tuesday. Mike Skougard, environmental programs team leader for the National Nuclear Security Administration's Nevada site office, said his agency began notifying local government officials about the plan last October. Twenty-five comments were received during public comment periods, which were generally supportive of the project, he said. The only agencies that responded were the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The federal government has taken an interest in chemicals that could be used in biological attacks since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist strike, he said. The tests are designed to develop sensing devices that detect biological weapons, according to the Security Administration. "We are looking at the potential for explosive releases, or releases from ground transportation from cars, and aircraft releases. These are all to try and allow ... our customers, which in some cases includes parts of DOE, to try and learn how to identify and track potential releases of these chemicals," Skougard said. During a meeting in Amargosa Valley last month, Carl Gertz, chairman of the Nevada Test Site Community Advisory Board, said the mission of the test site has changed from primarily a testing ground for the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons to a training ground for homeland security and counter-terrorism. Certain chemicals, "the really, really nasty stuff" can't be released due to treaty considerations, he said. Instead the

tests will involve "pretty benign types of biological organisms," Skougard said. "Most of what we're looking at are not actual chemical weapons, in fact we wouldn't release any of that at all," said Skougard. A letter from the energy department dated Oct. 1 states the exercise would release certain non-pathogenic, non-infectious biological materials from different locations on the test site. Specifically, the tests will release bacillus globigii, bacillus thuringiensis, bacillus subtilis, erwinia herbiola, and a male-specific bacteriophage, a non-infectious, or dead Influenza A virus. They were described as microbial agents that can simulate pathogens. Skougard said some of those chemicals are used in herbicides, insecticides and pesticides. The Security Administration indicated the Nevada Test Site has a wide variety of terrain that can mimic the types of locations where chemical detection systems could be used, such as industrial complexes, warehouses, tunnels and bunkers. Skougard said he traveled to Tonopah March 7 to brief Bureau of Land Management officials as well as representatives from Nye and Esmeralda counties. A draft environmental assessment is being prepared; if the conclusion of that assessment results in a finding of no significant impact, a lengthier environmental impact statement process wouldn't be required, Skougard said. A public comment period is scheduled next month for state and federal agencies to provide input on the environmental assessment. "We're looking at providing this service for other federal agencies, the military and local first responders," Skougard said. The highest concentrations will be 100 meters from the release sites, he said, and by 500 meters the material will be at a level that wouldn't be detectable. "We intend to treat these things with a lot of respect. In cases where we are using killed or attenuated organisms we're still going to treat them as if they're alive. So we're not going to be too cavalier about this," Skougard said. Commissioner Joni Eastley said she received calls about the proposal; mainly concerns the releases would kill migratory birds. Skougard said the releases could result in some mortality to animals and plants, but he defended the record of testing at the site. "In the 20 years plus we've been doing releases there we've not been able to identify any adverse effects. It's really had no effects on plants or animals downhill from the release site," Skougard said. Test site workers will wear appropriate safety equipment during the releases, he said. "The concentrations of chemicals we would be releasing are quite low," Skougard said. "At no time will any member of the general public be exposed. Of course, the test site is remote, we will be doing it away from the parts of the test site that the public would be exposed to, which is the southern edge," Skougard said. A project advisory panel will supervise the test releases, made up of Bechtel Corporation representatives, NNSA staff, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Air Force and others. A post-release monitoring program would also be set up. Nye County Commission Chairman Henry Neth asked if a representative from Nye County, the site county, could sit on the review panel. http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2004/03/19/news/bio.html (Return to Articles and Documents List) (Editor’s Note: Hyperlink to referenced report follows article. Click on link for full report.) New York Times March 30, 2004

Senate Panels To Get New Iraq Weapons Report By Douglas Jehl WASHINGTON, March 29 — The new chief American weapons inspector in Iraq has prepared a classified report on the hunt for illicit weapons there and will brief two Senate committees in closed sessions on Tuesday about his interim findings, Congressional officials say. The report, by Charles A. Duelfer, who took over the search in January, will be the first status report by the American government since October. It comes at a time when a host of government panels are looking into what appear to be intelligence mistakes disclosed by the failure of inspectors so far to find the chemical and biological weapons in Iraq that the Bush administration cited as a principal reason for going to war there a year ago. An American intelligence official who confirmed that Mr. Duelfer had completed the report declined to discuss its findings. But the official sought to minimize the significance of the document, saying that Mr. Duelfer "does not draw any conclusions" in the report and intended it primarily as "an update" for administration and Congressional leaders.

There was no indication on Monday that Mr. Duelfer's report would contradict the public conclusion offered in January by the departing weapons inspector, David A. Kay, who said government agencies were "all wrong, probably" in assessing before the war that Saddam Hussein's government possessed illicit weapons and that it was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Democratic senators who met recently in Baghdad with Mr. Duelfer said he provided no indication that his team had found evidence of any illicit Iraqi arsenal. Mr. Duelfer, who arrived in Iraq in February, is working as a special adviser to George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence. He is scheduled to be joined in testifying before the committees by Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who oversees the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group, which has been carrying out the search. The intelligence official said the Central Intelligence Agency hoped to make public on Tuesday an abbreviated, unclassified version of Mr. Duelfer's classified report. The agency followed the same approach in October when Mr. Kay produced an eight-page public statement on what he described at the time as an interim progress report. The intelligence official indicated that Mr. Duelfer's own report would probably be considerably shorter. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/30/politics/30WEAP.html (Return to Articles and Documents List) Testimony to the US Congress by Mr. Charles Duelfer,

Director of Central Intelligence Special Advisor for Strategy regarding Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Programs 30 March 2004 Mr. Chairman and distinguished members, thank you for the opportunity to address you today on the Iraq Survey Group and the investigation of Iraq’s WMD capabilities. Initial Impressions First, a disclaimer. This report is very limited in scope. It is intended to provide a status report of my efforts at steering the ISG. It is not a preliminary assessment of findings. I inherited the expectation of appearing before Congress from the previous Special Advisor, and I am using this opportunity to describe my overall approach. It has now been six weeks since I arrived in Baghdad as the DCI’s Special Advisor for WMD in Iraq. In that time I have begun my examination of the efforts of the Group, its accomplishments, and capabilities. Certainly, General Dayton and the ISG operation he has run for the past year have achieved many major accomplishments in difficult circumstances. Much data related to Iraq’s WMD programs has been gathered. It is clear that Iraq was in violation of UN Resolutions, including UNSCR 1441. I am now making some adjustments to strategy and focus, which I will discuss. Largely they are intended to derive the meaning of the assortment of facts we have accumulated and continue to accumulate. While I am new to the ISG and the process, which has been underway for the past year, this is not my first time in Baghdad. I have been directly involved in the disarmament of Iraq since 1993. I served as the Deputy Director of UNSCOM from 1993 until 2000. I have spent long hours over the years with many of the key figures—many now in jail—and know them well. It is with this experience in mind that I speak to you today about Iraq and the search for WMD. . . http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2004/tenet_testimony_03302004.html (Return to Articles and Documents List) Washington Post March 30, 2004 Pg. B2

Judge Delays Lawsuit To Help Anthrax Probe By Carol D. Leonnig and Allan Lengel, Washington Post Staff Writers A federal judge said yesterday that confidential information recently provided to him by the Justice Department shows that the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks is now at a "critical" and "sensitive" stage and could unearth significant leads by early July.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said the FBI investigation should be allowed to proceed "in an unfettered way," and he granted the government's request to postpone for six months the defamation lawsuit that former Army scientist Steven J. Hatfill filed last summer against the department and Attorney General John D. Ashcroft. The judge said that, for now, the complex search for the person who sent the anthrax-laced letters outweighs Hatfill's contention that Ashcroft and other federal authorities ruined his life by calling him a "person of interest" in the case. "I have to give them the opportunity to continue their investigation," Walton said of the FBI's 29-month probe, called "Amerithrax." "It obviously needs to be solved if it can be solved. I know there are going to be some events occurring in the near future. " The judge instructed Justice Department lawyers to brief him privately on the investigation's progress July 6 so that he can determine whether the probe is moving ahead in the way they expected. Authorities said they expect to get results in June from a sophisticated battery of tests, which the FBI hopes will identify the laboratory that produced the anthrax used in mailings that killed five people and sickened 17 others in the fall of 2001. The tainted letters were mailed to media and government offices. Richard L. Lambert, the FBI supervisor leading the investigation, said in court papers in a related anthrax case that the FBI has sought premier scientists around the globe to design and run the tests and that the results are considered crucial to narrowing the probe's focus. In his lawsuit, Hatfill, 50, a former researcher at the Army's infectious disease research laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick, contends that Ashcroft and his subordinates conducted a "coordinated smear campaign" dating to August 2002 and that they labeled him the likely culprit to avoid criticism that the investigation had stalled. Hatfill has denied any role in the mailings. "Mr. Ashcroft acted to protect both the department and his own political image at the expense of Mr. Hatfill's constitutional rights," said Mark Grannis, an attorney for Hatfill. The judge's remarks yesterday signaled a significant change. During a Jan. 26 hearing, Walton was not inclined to postpone Hatfill's lawsuit and said he was very concerned that Hatfill had been tarnished forever by Ashcroft's public remarks to television reporters and by various government leaks. Walton pointed out that until proved otherwise, Hatfill is an innocent man. "I totally understand how his life has been, at least at this point, virtually destroyed," Walton said during that hearing. In granting the delay yesterday, Walton stressed his new, confidential knowledge of the probe -- "perhaps one of the most complicated in the nation's history" -- and his wish to protect its work. Investigators have narrowed the likely source to a short list of labs, including Fort Detrick, the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and Louisiana State University, according to law enforcement sources who spoke on the condition that they not be named, citing government rules. Hatfill continues to be a key focus of the probe, law enforcement sources said, but some of them doubt that the team of 25 FBI agents and 12 postal inspectors will find the evidence to make a case against anyone. Even if tests point to one laboratory, it may not be clear who had access to the infectious bacteria, they said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34674-2004Mar29.html (Return to Articles and Documents List) Washington Times March 30, 2004 Pg. 6

EPA Staff Queried In Bioterror Probe By Guy Taylor, The Washington Times More than a dozen Environmental Protection Agency scientists have been interviewed by FBI agents investigating the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks and the more recent discovery of the bacteria ricin on Capitol Hill, The Washington Times has learned. The bulk of the interviews, conducted March 17, focused on an anonymous letter accusing an Egyptian-born EPA scientist of plotting biological warfare against the United States in the days before the anthrax attacks, EPA sources said. Meanwhile, in a separate development linked to the anthrax attacks, a federal judge yesterday granted the government's request to delay until October a lawsuit by bioweapons expert Steven J. Hatfill against Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI. In the suit, filed in August in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Mr. Hatfill said his reputation and life were destroyed when Mr. Ashcroft publicly named him a "person of interest" in the anthrax investigation.

Five persons were killed by the anthrax mailings, which increased fears of bioterrorism after the September 11 attacks. The probe into who mailed anthrax to media outlets in Florida and New York and to offices on Capitol Hill has yet to yield arrests or indictments. The Times reported last month that the FBI had questioned one unnamed EPA scientist about the anonymous letter sent in early October 2001 to police in Quantico, Va. The letter identified EPA scientist Ayaad Assaad as a "religious fanatic" with the means and intent to unleash a bioweapons attack. The FBI has declined to discuss the letter or the EPA interviews. One EPA employee, who met with the FBI, said the latest round of interviews focused on 14 scientists who worked closely with Mr. Assaad. The interviews were "low-key and relaxed," involving questions about the anonymous letter that implicated Mr. Assaad in the anthrax and the recent ricin letters, the EPA employee said, adding that the FBI agents told the scientists that they were trying to find out who had written the letter. The agents told the scientists that Mr. Assaad was not a suspect in the investigation, the EPA employee said. Mr. Assaad, who has graduate degrees from Iowa State University, has lived in the United States since the mid-1970s. Before working for the EPA, he was contracted by the U.S. Army to conduct research to develop a ricin vaccine. Dismissed from Fort Detrick, Md., in 1997, Mr. Assaad has filed a discrimination lawsuit against the Army, in which he says others at Fort Detrick ridiculed him by forming a group called the "Camel Club." Fort Detrick, a facility known to have had access to the Ames strain of anthrax used in the 2001 attacks, has been a focus of the anthrax probe. Like Mr. Assaad, Mr. Hatfill worked at Fort Detrick during the 1990s, although the two men did not work there during the same period. The FBI has not named any suspects in the anthrax probe. Government lawyers said Mr. Ashcroft's reference to Mr. Hatfill as a "person of interest" during an August 2002 news conference was an attempt to make clear that the bioweapons expert was not a suspect. Mr. Hatfill's lawyers said Mr. Ashcroft and others violated their client's constitutional rights. The lawsuit accuses the government of singling out Mr. Hatfill to deflect attention from a lack of progress in the anthrax probe. Mr. Hatfill has denied involvement in the anthrax attacks. The government wants his suit dismissed on the grounds that allowing it to go forward "will compromise and frustrate" the anthrax probe and could give Mr. Hatfill and others "a voyeur's window" into the probe's workings. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said he would rule later on whether to dismiss the Hatfill suit entirely. http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040329-104730-7820r.htm (Return to Articles and Documents List)