Abstract
The Clinton administration's decision early this year to spend $1.4 billion during fiscal year 2000 to combat chemical and biological terrorism provoked a rash of criticism from skeptical observers who argued that the massive increase in spending–nearly double this year's budget–was based on an exaggerated and unrealistic assessment of the threat. A quick look at history, said the skeptics, shows that during this century the United States has suffered only one fatality as a result of a chemical or biological attack.
Even the sharpest critics of the budget increase acknowledge, however, that just because a terrorist attack using chemical or biological weapons hasn't caused massive casualties yet, that doesn't mean it never will. Jonathan Tucker, an analyst at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a critic of the government's tendency to “exaggerate” the threat, concedes that “it may only be a matter of time before a successful attack occurs.”
In his essay “Bioterrorism: Threats and Responses,” which was published in Biological Weapons: Limiting the Threat, a 1999 book edited by Joshua Lederberg, Tucker describes chemical and biological terrorism as a “low-probability high-consequence” threat. It is the “high-consequence” element of this description that has grabbed the attention of most policy-makers and outside analysts.
The threat, Stimson Center analyst Amy Smithson told me recently, is not an exaggeration. “We have examples of terrorist attempts to acquire [chemical and biological] weapons. … Whether they want to have these capabilities only to threaten us, we don't know yet. But we shouldn't sit down and wait to be victims.”
Ken Alibek, a former Soviet bioweaponeer whose 1999 book Biohazard described a massive Soviet bioweapons program, agrees with Smithson. “Nobody seeks these weapons for fun,” Alibek told me. “So you have to face two attitudes: sit and wait or get prepared to mitigate the effects [of an attack].”
Nearly all analysts agree that most terrorists acting alone lack the ability to carry out a chemical or biological attack that would result in mass casualties. The main reason for concern, they say, is the possibility that state actors will aid and abet terrorist groups. David Siegirst, an expert on terrorism at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, says that there are groups and individuals who are willing to use chemical and biological weapons–the so-called “new terrorists.” Meanwhile, only states have the capacity to produce and weaponize the right types of chemical and biological agents. “I am concerned about these two groups [terrorists and rogue states] getting together,” Siegirst told me. “If a nonmajor power wanted to lash out at the United States, then it might be tempted to use chemical or biological weapons”–either directly or by arming a terrorist group.
Alibek's revelations about the Soviet bioweapons program have raised another concern about the relationship between state actors and terrorists. Analysts are not concerned that Russia might arm terrorists; rather, they fear that Russia's insecure weapons stockpiles and large cadre of underpaid but highly trained scientists are vulnerable to lucrative offers from terrorists and other states.
Donald Henderson, the former director of the World Health Organization's (WHO) program to eradicate the smallpox virus, is particularly concerned about Alibek's disclosure that the Soviet Union weaponized smallpox. According to Henderson, when the WHO declared in 1980 that smallpox had been eradicated from the planet, the virus immediately acquired strategic value. And its strategic value, he says, has continued to rise in the last 20 years as smallpox vaccinations have ceased.
According to Alibek, the Soviet Union tried to harness the virus's strategic potential by turning it into a biological weapon. Alibek himself supervised the production of 20 tons of smallpox for Biopreparat, the Soviet Union's biological weapons complex. The virus, he says, was to be delivered on SS-18 missiles in the event of a “total war” with the United States.
Henderson, who now directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, says that Alibek's smallpox revelations completely changed his approach to the terrorist threat. “The Russian program,” says Henderson, “resolved many development and dissemination problems and produced large amounts of materials.” To deter terrorists or rogue states from attempting to acquire the virus, Henderson argues that its possession should be considered a crime against humanity.
The Stimson Center's Amy Smithson shares Henderson's concerns about Alibek's disclosures. “We now know that the Soviet Union weaponized smallpox, a contagious disease. There's a reasonable probability that vials of smallpox are located in different spots. There are reports that Iraq, North Korea, and Iran may have shared the Soviet's wealth in this area.” If a terrorist group were to be aided by a country with access to the smallpox virus, says Smithson, the “consequences would be devastating.”
Bruce Hoffman
Donald Henderson
Ken Alibek
Amy Smithson
Jonathan Ban
David Siegirst
In November 1997, Defense Secretary William Cohen told ABC-TV's This Week that a supply of anthrax the size of a 5-pound bag of sugar would kill half the population of Washington, D.C.
This sort of sensational rhetoric leaves many analysts shaking their heads in frustration. Milton Leitenberg, a senior fellow at the University of Maryland's Center for International and Security Studies, told a government panel early this year that Cohen's 1997 remark was “exaggerated, inflammatory, essentially incorrect, counterproductive, and even dangerous.”
Part of the problem with the debate over chemical and biological terrorism, says the rand Corporation's Bruce Hoffman, is how we define the weapons. “We focus on chemical and biological weapons as weapons of mass destruction, when that is inaccurate. Except for nuclear weapons, which are the least probable weapons terrorists would use, none of these are weapons of mass destruction.” Hoffman cites the Aum Shinrikyo cult's 1995 sarin gas attack in a Tokyo subway, which resulted in only a dozen deaths, as proof that terrorists are incapable of using chemical and biological agents as weapons of mass destruction.
Other analysts, however, are concerned about the social and psychological impact a terrorist attack could have on the civilian population. According to Alibek, “A sole case of five or six people dead [from a chemical or biological terrorist attack] would be enough to create an enormous political crisis.”
“These agents would have a huge psychological impact,” says Amy Smithson. “This is scary stuff. You don't hear it, you don't smell it, you don't see it, and in the case of biological agents you may not even feel the symptoms for more than a week.” If there is an attack, she adds, “the finger-pointing that will take place will be a good show. Everybody will blame everybody else for not being appropriately prepared … and there will be stupid ideas like ‘every American is required to carry a gas mask’ and ‘every American is required to cooperate if police believe someone is brewing up bot-tox in his basement.’”
The debate over how to be “appropriately prepared” has already begun to heat up.
One bone of contention is the government's plan to develop an array of high-tech sensors to detect a biological or chemical attack. Two such detection systems are the army's Biological Integrated Detection System, which supposedly will be able to identify biological agents in less than 45 minutes, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Cepheid Briefcase Smart Cycler, a dna biosensor for detecting smallpox.
One analyst, Donald Henderson, regards most of these detection systems as a waste of money. “There are a lot of things being developed that should be considered technotoys. A lot of them have no applicability and are totally worthless.” He is afraid that these devices might end up causing false alarms which, he says, “could in many cases be absolutely destructive.”
Another “domestic preparedness initiative” receiving criticism is the Defense Department's plan to develop National Guard Rapid Assessment and Initial Detection (RAID) teams. The RAID teams are supposed to act in concert with local first-responders in the event of a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack. The Pentagon plans on spending $52 million next year to deploy the first 10 of a planned 54 RAID teams. Not everyone, however, is convinced that the teams will serve any purpose. Says Smithson, “There is no way that these teams, even if deployed in six hours, would be there in time to make any difference. This is a very poor answer and a waste of taxpayers' money.”
While there is disagreement over how the government should be spending its money, most of the analysts I spoke with did not think that next year's $1.4 billion budget to counter chemical and biological terrorism was excessive. Jonathan Ban, an analyst at the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, dismissed criticism of the budget increase. Compared to the proposed $280 billion defense budget, said Ban, the $1.4 billion to counter chemical and biological terrorism “is really just a drop in the bucket.”
Alibek, who appears to have had little trouble with his transformation from Soviet bioweaponeer to emphatic defender of U.S. interests, denounces as “self-promoters” those critical of the decision to spend more on defending America against chemical and biological weapons. “This debate has been permanent in the history of the United States. Every time there is an idea to make this country stronger, you will find opinions against it.”