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BIOSCIENCE AND THE

INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

PART I AND II

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON PREVENTION 

OF NUCLEAR AND BIOLOGICAL ATTACK

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION and SECOND SESSION

NOVEMBER 3, 2005 and May 4, 2006

Serial No. 109–53

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

PETER T. KING, New York, Chairman 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania 

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut 

JOHN LINDER, Georgia 

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana 

TOM DAVIS, Virginia 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

JIM GIBBONS, Nevada 

ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico 

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida 

BOBBY JINDAL, Louisiana 

DAVE G. REICHERT, Washington 

MICHAEL MCCAUL, Texas 

CHARLIE DENT, Pennsylvania 

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida 

BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington 

JANE HARMAN, California 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

NITA M. LOWEY, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON-LEE, Texas 

BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, U.S. Virgin Islands 

BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida

SUBCOMMITTEE ON PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR AND BIOLOGICAL 

ATTACK

JOHN LINDER, Georgia, Chairman 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

JIM GIBBONS, Nevada 

ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut 

BOBBY JINDAL, Louisiana 

CHARLIE DENT, Pennsylvania 

PETER T. KING, New York (Ex Officio) 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington 

JANE HARMAN, California 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, U.S. Virgin Islands 

BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi (Ex Officio)

(II) 
(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page 

STATEMENTS

The Honorable John Linder, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of Georgia and Chairman, Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and 

Biological Attack: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 1

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 2

The Honorable James R. Langevin, a Representative in Congress From the 

State of Rhode Island, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Prevention 

of Nuclear and Biological Attack ........................................................................ 3

The Honorable Norman D. Dicks, a Representative in Congress From the 

State of Washington ............................................................................................. 23

The Honorable Christopher Shays, a Representative in Congress From the 

State of Connecticut ............................................................................................. 31

The Honorable Rob Simmons, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of Connecticut ....................................................................................................... 20

WITNESSES

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2005

Mr. David A. Relman, M.D., Associate Professor, Microbiology & Immunology, 

and of Medicine, Stanford University: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 4

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 6

Mr. David R. Franz, D.V.M., Ph.D., Vice President & Chief Biological 

Scientist, Midwest Research Institute: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 8

Prepapred Statement ........................................................................................... 9

Mr. Michael J. Hopmeier, Chief, Innovative and Unconventional Concepts, 

Unconventional Concepts, Inc.: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 13

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 15

THURSDAY, MAY 4, 2006

Mr. Charles Allen, Chief Intelligence Officer, Department of Homeland 

Security: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 46

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 48

Ambassador Kenneth Brill, Director, National Counterproliferation Center, 

Office of the Director of National Intelligence: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 39

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 43

Dr. Alan MacDougall, Chief, Counterproliferation Support Office, Defense 

Intelligence Agency: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 55

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 56

Mr. Bruce Pease, Director, Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms 

Control, Central Intelligence Agency: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 52

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 53

(1)

BIOSCIENCE AND THE 

INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY 

PART I 

Thursday, November 3, 2005

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR

AND BIOLOGICAL ATTACKS, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m., in Room 

334, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. John Linder [chairman of 

the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Linder, Shays, Simmons, Langevin, and 

Dicks. 

Mr. LINDER. [Presiding.] The Homeland Security Subcommittee 

on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack will come to order. 

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today. 

In 2001, America was awakened to the reality of bioterrorism 

when five individuals died across the country as a result of a stillunsolved terrorist attack involving anthrax. In addition to those 

tragic deaths, 17 others developed anthrax infections. Thousands 

were placed on a regimen of cipro and a number of businesses, as 

well as House and Senate office buildings, were closed for months 

for decontamination. 

Our experience in 2001 was a wake-up call. Prior to 2001, the 

United States saw the threat of biological weapons was largely in 

strategic or military terms. At that time, no one seriously believed 

that this country would fall victim to a biological event due to the 

fear of nuclear retaliation. Our thinking, as we have since discovered, was 100 percent wrong. 

One area that must be improved is our intelligence. In March of 

2005, the report from the Silberman–Robb Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of 

Mass Destruction recommended that the United States improve its 

biological weapons intelligence. The principal theme of the report 

was the need to increase interaction between the intelligence community and the national security professionals. 

As chairman of the subcommittee, I can tell you that overseeing 

our efforts to prevent a nuclear event are relatively easy compared 

to the biological side, because scientists, federal agencies and the 

intelligence community and relevant international players all regularly talk with each other about nuclear security. We need a simi-
2

lar system for biological pathogens and technology, and we need it 

soon. 

It is incumbent upon us to face a reality that dangerous organisms like anthrax and botulism toxin, which occur naturally in 

the environment, can easily be acquired or even grown by terrorists 

bent on using them against the American people. We need a robust 

communication link between the intelligence and bioscience communities, education for researchers on the dangers on the misuse 

of biotechnology, and more stringent guidelines for handling or 

shipping biological pathogens if we are to significantly diminish 

this threat. 

I understand and appreciate the use of biological pathogens for 

scientific purposes, but we fail in our responsibility to nearly 300 

million Americans if we do not ensure that those same dangerous 

organisms never fall into the hands of those who would release 

them on an unsuspecting and ill-prepared public. The focus of today’s hearing should be on answering the question of how can the 

intelligence and bio communities best communicate toward that 

end.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN LINDER

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2005

I would like to thank our witnesses for appearing before this Subcommittee today. 

In 2001, America was awakened to the reality of bioterrorism when five individuals died across the country as a result of a still-unsolved terrorist attack involving 

anthrax. In addition to those tragic deaths, seventeen others developed anthrax infections, thousands were placed on a regiment of Cipro, and a number of businesses, 

as well as the House and Senate Office Buildings, were closed for months for decontamination. 

Our experience in 2001 was a wake up call. Prior to 2001, the United States saw 

the threat of biological weapons in largely strategic or military terms. At that time, 

no one seriously believed that this country would fall victim to a biological event 

due to the fear of nuclear retaliation. Our thinking, as we have since discovered, 

was 100 percent wrong. 

One area that must be improved is our intelligence. In March 2005, a report from 

the Silberman/Robb Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United 

States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction recommended that the U.S. improve 

its biological weapons intelligence capability. The principal theme of the report was 

the need to increase interaction between the intelligence community and national 

security professionals. 

As Chairman of this Subcommittee, I can tell you that overseeing our efforts to 

prevent a nuclear event are relatively easy compared to the biological side. Nuclear 

scientists, Federal agencies, the intelligence community, and relevant international 

players all regularly talk with each other about nuclear security. We need a similar 

system for biological pathogens and technology, and we need it now. 

It is incumbent upon us to face a reality that dangerous organisms like anthrax 

and botulinum toxin, which occur naturally in the environment, can be easily acquired or even grown by terrorists bent on using them against the American people. 

We need a robust communication link between the intelligence and bioscience 

communities, education for researchers on the dangers of misuse of biotechnology, 

and more stringent guidelines for handling or shipping biological pathogens, if we 

are to significantly diminish the threat. 

I certainly understand, and appreciate, the use of biological pathogens for scientific purposes, but we fail in our responsibility to nearly 300 million Americans 

if we do not ensure that those same dangerous organisms never fall into the hands 

of those who would release them on an unsuspecting and ill-prepared public. The 

focus of today’s hearing should be on answering the question of how can the intelligence and bio communities best communicate toward that end, and I look forward 

to the testimony of our witnesses on that topic. 

I now recognize my friend from Rhode Island, Mr. Langevin, for the purposes of 

making an opening statement.
3

Mr. LINDER. I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses on 

that topic, and I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Langevin. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to welcome and thank our witnesses for appearing 

before us today. 

Today, we are going to discuss a topic that many us of might not 

have thought much about before, the idea of medical and biological 

intelligence. Now, we are fortunate to have three experts in this 

not-so-well-known field here today to help educate us. 

I know from my service on the House Armed Services Committee 

the importance of the military place in medical intelligence. I know 

how crucial it is for the battlefield commander to have a clear picture of all the hazards that his troops may face. 

Often this includes not only the capabilities of the enemy’s weapons, but also the local epidemiology; the diseases in the local water 

supply that his soldiers should be aware of; or communicable diseases that he must protect them against. Does the enemy possess 

chemical or biological weapons capabilities? If so, what is the most 

effective countermeasure? 

These are the kinds of questions that medico-and bio-science intelligence professionals in the military must answer. I think there 

are lessons that can be learned from the military’s approach to help 

us protect not just our service men and women, but our civilian 

population as well. 

Of course, there are also differences. If a military commander is 

told that his soldiers will be operating in an area where anthrax 

is endemic among animals such as Afghanistan, he can simply 

order his troops to be vaccinated. This does not always translate 

to the civilian population, however. 

We know, for example, that 2 years ago the president pledged to 

vaccinate both the military and first-responder community against 

smallpox. The plan was to vaccinate 500,000 members of each community. While the program succeeded among the military, it failed 

miserably in the first-responder community, with only 40,000 vaccinated, less than 10 percent of the target goal. 

So while I do believe there are many useful lessons that we can 

adapt from the military’s experience, I know that we cannot apply 

all of the systems and procedures directly to the civilian side. I 

hope our witnesses will elaborate on where we should and should 

not be seeking to draw comparisons, and also I am interested to 

learn more about the similarities and differences between bioweapons and naturally occurring diseases. 

For example, will systems used to detect and defend against bioweapons also be effective for naturally occurring diseases? From 

what I have seen, and I hope that the witnesses will correct me if 

I am wrong, the potential seriousness, for example, of an avian flu 

pandemic is much greater than any scenarios that have been seen 

for a possible bio-weapons attack. 

So while this committee and the Department of Homeland Security are more focused on intentional attacks, rather than natural 

catastrophes, we hope that we can leverage our practices so that 

they will be helpful for either eventuality. 
4

We have seen from the recent Gulf Coast hurricanes that the Department of Homeland Security, if it focuses purely on terrorism, 

will fail the American people. I look forward to an open and informative discussion today. Once again, I thank the witnesses for being 

here and I look forward to your testimony. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. LINDER. I thank the gentleman. 

Our witnesses today are Dr. David Relman, associate professor 

of microbiology and immunology and of medicine at Stanford University; Dr. David Franz, vice president and chief biological scientist at Midwest Research Institute; and Mr. Michael Hopmeier, 

the president of Unconventional Concepts, Inc. 

We welcome you all. 

Dr. Relman? We would ask you to try and keep your statement 

to about 5 minutes. The entire statement, without objection, will be 

made part of the record. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID RELMAN 

Dr. RELMAN. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Linder and 

members of the committee. It is an honor to be able to present my 

thoughts to you on a topic of substantial importance to the security 

of the United States. 

I am trained both as a physician specializing in infectious diseases and as a microbiologist, and currently run a research laboratory in the academic sector. I have served as a professor of medicine and of microbiology at Stanford since 1994. 

In 1997, I joined a newly formed advisory group for the Defense 

Intelligence Agency known as BioChem 2020. This group of academic, industry and government experts, which also includes Dr. 

Franz to my left, identifies and assesses current and future threats 

related to the potential misuse of the life sciences and advises the 

intelligence community on these matters. 

Among other relevant activities, I am currently a member of the 

National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. 

Today, we are blessed with a set of unprecedented opportunities 

in the life sciences, and with them a set of serious and formidable 

challenges. The pace of advance in the life sciences continues to accelerate at a rapid rate. These advances have become globally disseminated and widely accessible. While these advances enable 

broad and powerful new tools for improving health and treating 

disease, they also carry with them unavoidable inherent risks of 

misuse and possible harm. 

One of the most important approaches for addressing these potential threats is to anticipate and interdict them before they cause 

harm. To do this, one needs a robust, experienced, agile and creative intelligence collection and analysis capability. So how does 

this need stack up against current capabilities? 

Unfortunately, current intelligence community expertise in the 

life sciences is not sufficient to meet these challenges. Historically, 

most investments in science and technology expertise within the 

intel community have been in the physical sciences. Relatively few 

biologists have been recruited to work within this community. 

Those that have been recruited are thinly and unevenly distributed across vast agencies. There are assigned huge portfolios. They 
5

are frequently reassigned to entirely new areas of work or moved 

to new administrative positions, and they quickly become sequestered from the daily buzz of activity in the life sciences. Separation 

from today’s life sciences workplace inevitably leads to ineffectiveness and irrelevance. In short, at the present time, bioscience expertise within the intelligence community is patchy and thin, inadequately coordinated, and rapidly outdated. 

So let me offer some thoughts about two basic solutions, an internal approach and an external approach. First, in building a more 

robust, sustained and effective capability in the life sciences within 

the intelligence community, it is critical that state-of-the-art scientific expertise guide both intelligence collection and analysis. Additional researchers with doctoral degrees in the life sciences and 

working experience at the cutting edge of science need to be recruited in substantial numbers to the intelligence community. Significant efforts will also be needed to retain these individuals and 

maintain their intimate familiarity and connectedness with the 

state-of-the-art in their respective disciplines. 

Second, efforts to create a robust external advisory entity to the 

intelligence community on current and future biological threats 

should be expanded, strengthened and accelerated. On this point, 

I support Recommendation 13.1 of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of 

Mass Destruction, aka the Silberman–Robb Commission, which 

suggests the creation of a Biological Sciences Advisory Group. 

DIA’s BioChem 2020 illustrates some of the features that would 

be desirable. This advisory group should provide guidance on anticipating future technological and conceptual developments in the 

life sciences; provide guidance on intelligence targeting and collection requirements; provide expert analysis of relevant intelligence; 

and provide an independent reality check on technical assessments 

in the life sciences. 

The group should operate under the auspices of the national security and intelligence community leadership and provide input at 

the highest levels of these communities. The group should operate 

independently and initiate its own analyses, as well as respond to 

requests. The group should also be composed of leading experts 

from academia, industry and government from a wide range of disciplines. 

A core set of dedicated members should meet frequently enough 

to establish close working relationships with the intelligence community. This has been a particularly important and successful feature of DIA’s BioChem 2020. It is my sense that many leading figures in the life sciences and technology communities would be more 

than willing to participate in this effort to establish a productive 

and effective working relationship with members of the intelligence 

community. 

In conclusion, we face daunting challenges from rapidly accelerating advances in the life sciences and the inherent dual-use 

risks that they pose. Anticipating, recognizing and interdicting 

emerging biological threats will not be easy, but we cannot afford 

not to try. I believe that the time is now opportune for action. 

I am happy to answer any questions. Thank you. 

[The statement of Dr. Relman follows:]
6

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DAVID A. RELMAN

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2005

Good morning Chairman Linder, Ranking Member Langevin, and Members of the 

Committee. It is an honor to have this opportunity to present my thoughts to you 

on a topic of substantial importance to the security of the United States. To begin, 

let me provide you with a few brief comments on my background and the expertise 

that I bring to the issues at hand today. 

I am trained both as a physician and practitioner of infectious diseases, as well 

as a research microbiologist, and currently run a laboratory of basic investigation 

into the mechanisms of microbial disease and the discovery of novel microbial 

agents of disease. I have served as a professor of medicine and of microbiology at 

Stanford University since 1994. Through relationships forged in the mid-1990’s as 

a research funding recipient and reviewer for the Defense Advance Research 

Projects Agency, I was asked in 1997 to join a newly-formed advisory group at the 

Defense Intelligence Agency, known as Biochem 20/20. This group of academic, industry, and government experts (which also includes Dr. Franz) identifies and assesses current and future threats related to the potential misuse of the life sciences 

and associated technologies, and advises the intelligence community. I have participated in a variety of studies at the National Academies of Science on future biological threats, served on biodefense advisory groups for the Departments of Defense 

and Energy, and am currently a member of the National Science Advisory Board 

for Biosecurity.

Challenges 

Today, we are blessed with a set of unprecedented opportunities in the life 

sciences and with them, a set of serious and formidable challenges. The pace of advance in the life sciences and related technologies continues to accelerate at a dizzying rate. New insights and discoveries are arising in unpredictable fashion from 

the convergence of previously unrelated scientific disciplines. These advances in the 

life sciences have become globally disseminated, and made widely accessible due to 

the inherent openness of the life sciences enterprise. For example, biological engineering of microbes can now be executed in the home. While these advances enable 

broad and powerful new tools for improving health and treating disease, they also 

carry with them unavoidable, inherent risks of misuse and possible harm. 

One of the most important approaches for addressing these potential threats is 

to anticipate and interdict them before they cause harm. (This concept is relevant 

to biological threats of both natural and man-made origin.) Prevention is far more 

cost-effective than response and recovery. To be able to anticipate future biological 

threats one needs a robust, experienced, agile and creative intelligence collection 

and analysis capability. How does this need stack up against current capabilities?

Reality Check 

Unfortunately, current intelligence community capabilities and expertise in the 

life sciences and related technologies are not sufficient to meet these challenges. 

Historically, most investments in expertise within the intelligence community in the 

realm of science and technology have emphasized the physical sciences. (When referring to the ‘‘intelligence community’’, I mean to include the national security communities at large.) Relatively few biologists have been recruited to work within this 

community. Those that have been recruited are thinly and unevenly distributed 

across vast agencies, assigned huge portfolios, and quickly become sequestered and 

cut off from the daily buzz of communication, sharing and discussion that is the essential fuel of the life sciences. Separation from today’s workplace in the life 

sciences inevitably leads to ineffectiveness and an inability to appreciate the cutting 

edge or to predict future trends. This problem is compounded when analysts and 

collectors are re-assigned to entirely new areas of work or moved to new administrative positions on a frequent basis. In short, at the present time, bioscience expertise 

within the intelligence community is too patchy and thin, inadequately coordinated, 

unsustained, and becomes rapidly outdated. 

In theory, an inadequate set of resources within the intelligence community might 

be partially offset by efforts to borrow or share resources (e.g., expertise) from outside the community. For example, groups of outside experts might provide a continuing, direct link to some of the most relevant, advancing frontiers in the life 

sciences, as well as assessments of future threats and current intelligence. Although 

efforts of this type have taken place, and are worth discussing in some detail as part 

of this hearing, the net result has failed so far to meet the community’s needs. However, I believe that more can be done with this approach, as well as with complementary approaches to build the internal expertise of the intelligence community. 
7

In particular, I am relatively optimistic that the traditional cultural barriers between this community and today’s life sciences communities can be overcome.

Possible solutions 

Let me offer some thoughts about two basic solutions: an internal approach and 

an external approach. 

First, in building a more robust, sustained and effective internal capability in the 

life sciences within the intelligence community, it is critical that state-of-the-art scientific expertise guide both, intelligence collection and intelligence analysis. 

—Researchers with doctoral degrees in the life sciences and working experience 

at the cutting edge in their respective fields need to be recruited in substantial 

numbers to the intelligence community. 

—Significant efforts will also be needed to retain these individuals and maintain 

their intimate familiarity and connectedness with the cutting edge in their respective disciplines. Regular assignments to the scientific workplace may be necessary. 

Continuing advanced scientific education is essential. The intelligence community 

should avoid assigning these scientists to unrelated jobs and responsibilities. 

Second, efforts to create an external advisory entity to the intelligence community 

on matters related to threats from the life sciences and related technologies should 

be expanded, strengthened, and given high priority. On this point, I support Recommendation 13.1 of The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United 

States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (Report, March 31, 2005; Silberman 

and Robb, Co-Chairmen) which suggests the creation of an advisory group, that they 

have named the ‘‘Biological Sciences Advisory Group’’. DIA’s Biochem 20/20 provides 

some examples of features that would be desirable. 

—This advisory group should provide guidance on anticipating future technological and conceptual developments in the life sciences, provide guidance on intelligence targeting and collection requirements, provide expert analysis of relevant intelligence, and provide an independent ‘‘reality-check’’ on technical assessments in 

the life sciences. 

—The group should operate under the auspices of the national security and intelligence community leadership, and provide input at the highest levels of these communities. The WMD Commission suggestion that such a group report to the Director 

of National Intelligence should be strongly considered. 

—The group should operate independently and initiate its own analyses, as well 

as respond to requests from the intelligence, national security, and policy-making 

communities. It should have access to any and all intelligence that is relevant to 

its work. The group should generate analysis products that are available to the 

broad outside scientific community, as well as products at the classified level. 

—The group should be composed of leading experts from academia, industry, and 

government, from a wide range of disciplines. A core set of dedicated members 

should meet frequently enough to establish close working relationships between the 

outside experts and the intelligence community representatives. This has been a 

particularly important and successful feature of DIA’s Biochem 20/20. 

—Given that both, potential threats and solutions are globally dispersed, every effort should be made to share the output of this advisory group with its international 

counterparts. 

It is my sense that many leading figures in the life sciences and technology communities would be more than willing to participate in a serious effort to establish 

a productive and effective working relationship with members of the intelligence 

community.

Conclusions 

In conclusion, we face daunting challenges from rapidly accelerating advances in 

the life sciences and related technologies, and the inherent dual use risks that they 

pose with respect to potential future biological threats. Anticipating, recognizing and 

interdicting these threats will not be easy. But we cannot afford not to try. The critical elements of a meaningful effort in this regard will include 1) building a more 

robust and sustained expertise in the life sciences within the intelligence community, and 2) creating an external expert advisory group with a close working relationship to this and related communities. Given the similarity of my recommendations with those from other policy and review groups, and what I perceive to be receptive, relevant parties, the time is now opportune for action. 

I am happy to answer any questions.

Mr. LINDER. Thank you, Dr. Relman. 

Dr. Franz? 
8

STATEMENT OF DAVID FRANZ, VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

BIOLOGICAL SCIENTIST, MIDWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE 

Mr. FRANZ. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members, it is an honor 

to appear before you to address issues related to the interface between the intelligence and scientific communities and the potential 

benefit to be gained by bringing these communities more closely together to address biological threats to the nation. 

My background is described in my written statement. I have attempted to provide my views in a submitted statement for the 

record and will summarize them here. 

I believe that biological warfare is unique for several reasons. I 

highlight the fact that the facilities, equipment, procedures and 

human resources needed to develop biological weapons are dualuse. This means that they can be used to do good or bad things 

with biology. Therefore, it is in fact often impossible to understand 

the ultimate purpose of ongoing research simply by inspecting a facility and even having the opportunity to visit with scientists working there. 

As an example, we learned relatively very little about the enormous biological warfare program in the former Soviet Union before 

the epidemiological studies of the Sverdlovsk anthrax accident and 

the defection of two key scientists in the early 1990s. At the end 

of the Cold War, as a result of the Trilateral Agreement, U.S.–

U.K.–Russia, of 1992, we gained some access to Russian biological 

facilities, but very little true understanding of the programs. 

More importantly, I watched personally as those negotiations 

and visits build walls of silence and suspicion and shut down communication until the trilateral negotiations failed and the Nunn–

Lugar science-based programs stimulated dialogue directly between 

scientists. I believe there are important lessons to be learned from 

this experience. 

Our more immediate concern today, biological terrorism, differs 

from biological warfare in that, one, the footprint of both the production capability and the weapon can be infinitely smaller; and 

two, attribution will typically be a great deal more difficult. The 

goals of the terrorist are different. Depending on the agent selected, I believe that disruptive deployment of a biological weapon 

of some kind is possible for almost anyone with intent. Furthermore, there is a broad range of potential threats presenting minimal to very significant technical barriers for the would-be terrorist, 

but intent is central to any attempt to abuse biology. 

What does this mean for the intelligence community? One, what 

we learn about intent will be more valuable than what we know 

about capability. Two, even in this new small world, we will be 

forced to make high-regret decisions or responses with less information in the future than in the past. And three, we must constantly thrive, as Dr. Relman said, to bring deep biological science 

understanding to the IC. 

What can we do? First, we must hire and retain the best people 

we can. The cultures of science and intelligence are in many ways 

antithetical. Science is about communication, collaboration, openness and flexible work schedules and getting lifetime credit for the 

work that one does. Intelligence, on the other hand, is about sensitive or classified information; about working with another’s data 
9

and publications and not sharing and not giving credit for one’s 

analysis and thought, at least not widely. When we do succeed in 

hiring first-rate scientists into the IC, they too often become disenchanted with the culture in which they must work. 

And two, we must attempt to benefit from the experience and 

perspective of the private sector. Biotechnologies, as Dr. Relman 

said, are both changing rapidly and spreading, with broad and diverse applications across disciplines around the globe. Science and 

business travelers today together cast a much wider net than can 

ever be formally assembled by our government. 

Finally, I believe that a reasonable analogy to the problem we 

face in preparing the IC workforce to deal with science as squishy 

as biology is foreign language qualification for regional studies. The 

better my French, the richer will be my experience on a holiday in 

France and the more the French people will enjoy interacting with 

me. 

Science is a common language. The better my understanding of 

the technologies and the vocabulary and the idiom, the richer will 

be my experience talking science anywhere in the world, and the 

more my colleagues will enjoy our time together. When scientists 

talk about scientists, transparency is enhanced and intent often becomes better understood. As I have said, I believe that intent is the 

key to discovering those who would mis-use biology today. 

I thank you for this opportunity. 

[The statement of Mr. Franz follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DAVID FRANZ

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2005

Mr. Chairman, distinguished Members, it is an honor to appear before you to address issues related to the interface between the intelligence and scientific communities and the potential benefit to be gained by bringing these communities more 

closely together to address biological threats to the nation. I am currently Vice 

President and Chief Biological Scientist at the Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City, Director of the National Agriculture Biosecurity Center at Kansas State 

University and Senior Fellow for Bioterrorism at the Combating Terrorism Center 

at West Point. I served on active duty in the U.S. Army from 1971 to 1998, 24 of 

those years in the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. I served 

for 11 years at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease, 

which I commanded before my retirement. During my tour of duty at USAMRIID, 

I served as Chief Inspector on three UNSCOM biological warfare missions to Iraq 

and as technical expert on the Trilateral (US–UK-Russia) Agreement visits and negotiations to Russia. I have worked under the auspices of the ‘‘Nunn-Lugar’’ Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) since 

1994 and, since 1998, chaired the National Academies of Science standing committee which provides technical review to the CTR-supported research conducted 

there. I currently serve on senior S&T advisory biodefense panels for the Defense 

Threat Reduction Agency and for the Department of Homeland Security, Science 

and Technology Directorate and I chair the Working Group on International Collaboration of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) within 

the Department of Health and Human Services. The myriad opportunities given me 

throughout my career in military medical research have led me to better understand 

and value the use of science as a common language to build relationships, understanding and transparency internationally. 

This committee has asked that I provide thoughts on how the scientific community can be more effectively engaged by the intelligence community and some broad 

perspective on how to address the problem of intelligence regarding the biological 

threat(s). I have attempted to provide my views on a number of these issues below.
10

BACKGROUND: 

Why is biology special? I believe that biological warfare is unique for several 

reasons. First, the facilities, equipment, procedures and human resources needed 

are ‘‘dual-use’’. This means that they can be used to do good or bad things with biology. When attempting to understand what is going on within a state scientific program or the laboratory of a non-state organization, understanding the intent of 

those who control these dual-use resources is more important than our access to the 

facilities. It is, in fact, often impossible to understand the ultimate purpose of ongoing research simply by ‘inspecting’ a facility and even having the opportunity for 

typically-orchestrated, monitored and, therefore, stilted discussion with the scientists. Additionally, biology is special because, in contrast to a chemical attack, for 

example, we cannot yet provide real-time warning to effectively use personal 

protective gear. Thirdly, clinical disease resulting from biological exposure occurs 

hours or days after attack. Unlike most other weapons systems, the relatively long 

latent period between attack and illness provides opportunity for perpetrators 

to escape and greatly complicates both the medical care of victims and law enforcement activities. 

Lessons from the cold war: We learned relatively very little about the enormous biological warfare program of the FSU before the epidemiological studies of 

the 1979 Sverdlosk anthrax accident and the defection of two key scientists to the 

west which occurred in the early 90s. Our intelligence failure may have been the 

result of a combination of the uniqueness of biology and a relatively lower concern 

for the biological threat than for the nuclear or chemical threats during those years. 

Coincidentally, there was much more interaction between nuclear scientists from 

the USSR and the US during this period than there was between biological scientists from the two countries. . .and we understood their nuclear program better 

during that period. At the end of the cold war, as a result of the Trilateral agreement of 1992, we gained some access to Russian biological facilities but very little 

true understanding of the programs. Confidently inferring intent from a formal facilities visit or inspection was the exception. More importantly, I watched as those 

negotiations built walls of silence and suspicion and shut down communication. . .until the Trilateral negotiations failed and Nunn-Lugar science-based programs opened dialogue directly between scientists. The CTR programs haven’t made 

us totally safe, but they helped both sides understand better what we did and didn’t 

know. In my experience, more good has come from the resulting personal relationships build around the science than from formal government programs calculated 

to control proliferation. There are important lessons to be learned from this experience. 

Biological Warfare vs. Biological Terrorism: Dealing with the massive offensive biological programs of the FSU, frustrating as the process was during the ‘‘Trilateral Era’’, will likely prove to have been easier than what we will face in the future. Biological terrorism differs from biological warfare in that 1) the footprint of 

both a production capability and the biological weapon itself can be infinitely smaller and 2) attribution will typically be a great deal more difficult. Finally, we need 

only look to the ‘‘anthrax letters of ‘01’’ to see how disruptive and costly a very small 

attack can be. 

How to think about the threat: Today’s threat probably differs significantly 

from that during the height of the USSR’s massive offensive program. Because of 

strategic changes in centers of power and world politics, terrorists are believed to 

be a more likely threat than state-run programs. Whether state-sponsored or not, 

the magnitude of an aerosol attack launched by a terrorist group will likely be 

smaller and more primitive than what we would have expected from the USSR. We 

normally consider access to the agents, technical expertise, the need for facilities 

and equipment and the intention to use biology as a weapon as the key barriers 

to success for the would-be terrorist. Depending on the agent selected, I believe that 

disruptive deployment of a biological attack of some kind is possible for almost anyone with intent. To illustrate this point—the spectrum from ‘‘easy’’ to 

‘‘hard’’—I often use the following simplified model. Success on the ‘‘easy’’ end of the 

spectrum requires just a little more than intent.

Easy<------------------------------------------------------------------->Difficult 

Few Technical Barriers Many Technical Barriers 

Highly Contagious (Animal) Contagious (Human) Traditional Agent Genetically engineered 

(Foot & Mouth Virus) (SARS, Flu, Smallpox) (Anthrax, tularemia) (????????)
11

Easy<------------------------------------------------------------------->Difficult—

Continued

Few Technical Barriers Many Technical Barriers 

Highly Contagious (Animal) Contagious (Human) Traditional Agent Genetically engineered 

Simply Introduced Introduced or Aerosol Delivered as an Aerosol Introduced or Aerosol

Available (Available) Available in Nature Modified or de novo 

Spread Naturally Spread Naturally Understanding Significant Expertise 

Safe to handle Safety Hazard Basic Equipment Complex Equipment 

Safety Hazard Unknown Safety Hazard 

Therefore, there is a broad range of potential threats presenting minimal to very 

significant technical barriers for the would-be terrorist. . .but intent is central to 

any attempt to abuse biology.

CONCLUSIONS: 

What does all this mean for the intelligence community? 

1-Although we definitely cannot ignore Soviet or Iraqi—like programs in the future, we must be able to discover a terrorist-size program now, if possible at the 

point of early intent. 

2-The biological intelligence target of today will likely be harder to identify, let 

alone penetrate, than it was during the cold war. 

3-What we learn about ‘intent’ will be more valuable than what we know about 

capability. 

4-Even in this new, small world, we will be forced to make high-regret decisions 

or responses with less information in the future than in the past. 

5-A ‘‘we only collect secrets’’ culture, sometimes fostered within the IC, will leave 

too much white space between the dots to build the real story regarding biology, unless we have a broad framework of scientific understanding on which to pin the relatively few science ‘‘secrets’’ which we do discover. 

6-We must constantly strive to bring deep biological science understanding to the 

community. Analysts need to learn of the latest discoveries in biology, understand 

the newest technologies and appreciate their implications for intentional abuse.

RECOMMENDATIONS: 

What can we do? As in any undertaking, the best people with the best leadership will provide the best outcome to this challenge. We must put the best people 

we can into the intelligence community and give them the best leadership and supporting infrastructure we can afford.

We must: 

1. Hire and retain the best: The cultures of science and intelligence are, in many ways, antithetical. Science is about communication, collaboration, openness and flexible work schedules. Scientists love 

to publish and they love to tell people about their work. The currency of science is open, refereed publications and presentations at national and international meetings. Scientists are free to publish in journals 

and, once accepted, their work is forever credited to them. Scientist care more about discovery and publishing than about salary, fancy offices or in what part of the country or world they live. Scientists love 

to communicate with other scientists. Intelligence is about sensitive or classified information, about working 

with another’s data and publications, about not sharing and not getting credit for ones analysis and 

thought. . .at least not widely. A common task of the analyst might be to distill and simplify, often dated, 

often openly published literature and then to make giant leaps of interpretation regarding it’s meaning in 

unknown context. . .and then to speculate on the intent of a person or group. A ‘‘we only collect secrets’’ 

mentality—especially in the world of bioterrorism—might provide us historical intelligence but probably not 

actionable intelligence. A culture where knowledge is power, openness is not advocated and there are few 

checks and balances can draw second rate scientists who package speculation as hard evidence. Even 

the initial excitement of directly briefing key national decision makers gets old for real scientists. When 

we do succeed in hiring first-rate scientists into the IC (intelligence community), they too often become 

disenchanted with their work and the culture. We must find a way to hire and retain a quality, scientifically 

literate intelligence workforce. Traditionally, the community has put analyst expertise before science expertise; if that policy is to continue, every effort must be made to give biodefense analysts opportunities to 

interact with scientists, engineers and other relevant experts just as often as possible.

We might: 

1-Encourage analysts to obtain joint appointments at universities or industrial research programs and collaborate with full-time scientists. 
12

2-Allow analysts to spend as much as 1/3 of their time ‘‘off the clock’’, working 

in academe, industry or other governmental laboratories. . .and make publication 

a part of their performance plan on which they are rated. In some cases, this might 

mean 2 days per week away from the job and in others it might be every third year 

away. 

3-Develop true joint-appointment programs in which an academic or industrial 

scientist serves the smaller portion of a FTE within the IC with a primary career 

outside. 

Fundamentally, it is much more critical today than during the cold war that the 

analyst continually interacts with the community of scientists, outside the IC. A 

non- or weak-scientist, analyst or collector briefed by scientists and sent into the 

scientific culture will fail to engage and learn. The stronger the scientist, the better 

the engagement, the understanding and the trust. . .and the transparency. 

Making the best and the brightest interested scientists available to our analyst 

community has value. The DIA Red Team 20/20, on which both Dr. Relman and I 

serve, has demonstrated the enormous value of bringing together the security and 

the scientific communities. Dr. Relman and four or five exceptional colleagues from 

academe provide the rest of us a wealth of hard science against which we can evaluate our thoughts and concerns. Even in this setting, although the members of this 

committee are all US citizens and have common goals regarding understanding future threats to our nation, it took several years to build a sense of ‘team’ in this 

diverse group. The glue was, and is, the science.

2. Attempt to benefit from the experience and perspective of the private 

sector: Biotechnologies are both changing rapidly and spreading with broad and diverse application—across disciplines—around the globe. Electronic communication, 

ease of rapid travel, new opportunities for free enterprise and a generally more 

widespread openness in formerly closed societies have greatly increased integration 

and human interaction among scientists and business persons worldwide. These 

travelers, together, cast a much wider net than can ever be formally assembled by 

our government. We should seek opportunities for these traveling masses to provide 

interaction and feedback to the community on what’s ‘‘out there’’ in terms of technologies and capabilities. Discoveries and observations, regarding intent, gained 

from the private sector will obviously occur much more often by chance than by design, but the numbers and coverage could make it a very helpful tool, if we can harness it effectively. It is important that the intelligence community---or possibly the 

law enforcement agency to which someone might report an unusual incident---remain passive receptors of information from the private sector. Gaining such information from scientists, clinicians and other knowledgeable individual traveler-citizens is a slippery slope; abuse will do much more harm than good.

We should: 

1-Encourage, not discourage, interactions between U.S. science and business and 

their counterparts around the world. 

2-Sensitize this community, or parts of it, to the importance of informing someone, should they observe or hear of what appears to be malevolent intent. Education of the masses of scientists and biotechnology business person will have to 

occur indirectly, raising general awareness of the importance of controlling the misuse of biology, rather than tasking them to ‘‘hunt for bioterrorists’’. Activities currently underway by non-governmental organizations, the National Academies of 

Science and even the World Health Organization, to educate and develop awareness 

regarding the misuse of biotechnology, (See ‘‘Biotechnology Research in an Age of 

Terrorism’’ 10@ www.nap.edu) may contribute to developing awareness that could 

result in gaining information from unlikely sources. 

3-Outside the intelligence community, work together internationally on common, 

difficult problems in biology; leads to understanding, transparency and even trust 

that cannot be achieved through other means (See ‘‘Biological Science and Biotechnology in Russia: Controlling Disease and Enhancing Security’’ 10@

www.nap.edu). Chronic and emerging disease will be with us when the last bioterrorist retires. Working with colleagues to fight natural disease brings us into contact 

with biological activities and builds our network of trusted contacts around the 

world. Even in countries which are known to pose a threat to our biological security, 

more scientists and clinicians share our goals regarding health than share the goals 

of the would-be bioterrorist regarding the abuse of biology. 

4-Understand that the intelligence community is just one of the tools we have to 

protect our citizens from those who would harm them. We must, obviously, conduct 

classified defense and intelligence programs to help protect us from threat states or 

groups and we must deal from a position of strength in this very dangerous world. 

However, we must remember that in the new, smaller world, perception is an ex-
13

tremely powerful tool and the masses of non-terrorists out there can, indirectly, help 

us fight this war on terrorism, if they think positively of America. Therefore, we 

must not only allow, but encourage and support, public health and other programs 

that both improve human security but build understanding, some trust and some 

transparency between individual Americans and individual citizens of other nations. 

Walls around our nation, be they of chain-link or invisible, will not necessarily make 

us safer anymore. 

The Power of a Common Language: A reasonable analogy to the problem we 

face, in preparing an IC workforce to deal with a science as squishy as biology, is 

foreign language qualification for regional studies. The better my French, the richer 

will be my experience on a holiday in France and the more the French people will 

enjoy interacting with me. Science is a common language; the better my understanding of the technologies, the vocabulary and the idiom, the richer will be my 

experience ‘‘talking science’’ anywhere in the world and the more my colleagues will 

enjoy our time together. When scientists talk about science, intent often becomes 

better understood. . .and intent is the key to discovering those who would misuse 

biology.

Mr. LINDER. Thank you, Dr. Franz. 

Mr. Hopmeier? 

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL J. HOPMEIER, CHIEF, INNOVATIVE 

AND UNCONVENTIONAL CONCEPTS, UNCONVENTIONAL 

CONCEPTS, INC. 

Mr. HOPMEIER. Thank you, Chairman Linder, Ranking Member 

Langevin and committee members. I would like to thank you for 

this opportunity to discuss today an issue of paramount importance 

to our nation, the application and use of intelligence concepts and 

techniques to the biosciences, including medicine and biotechnology. 

As we have seen time and again, most recently when several 

problems have arisen, such as the anthrax incidents, the Chiron 

troubles of last year, and the anticipated difficulties of the H5N1 

avian influenza pandemic now facing us, the need to anticipate 

events is tantamount to avoiding surprise and possibly disaster. 

To put my comments in context, I would like to provide you with 

a brief summary of my background. I am currently president of a 

policy and engineering consulting firm, Unconventional Concepts, 

Incorporated. For the last decade, I have been involved in a number of senior policy positions as a government employee and a consultant. These have included chairing a membership on several different science studies. 

I am currently special adviser to the United States surgeon general on homeland security and weapons of mass destruction; the 

senior science adviser to the deputy assistant secretary of defense 

for chemical and biological defense; and an adviser and consultant 

to numerous other agencies and organizations. Included in my written testimony is a fuller CV. 

Today, I will use the term ‘‘intelligence’’ in my discussions, and 

I think it is appropriate to define it. ‘‘Intelligence’’ in this context 

is the product resulting from the collection, processing, integration, 

analysis, evaluation and interpretation of available information 

concerning the biosciences and factors affecting public health and 

medicine. 

I would like to note at this point, however, that even assuming 

that we were to fix or improve the intelligence process associated 

with the biosciences, we must also be able and willing to act on 

what intelligence provides us. While action based on intelligence is 
14

not the topic of today’s testimony, please recognize that intelligence 

in and of itself is not a panacea. It is useless without the process, 

will and ability to act. 

To come right to the point, there exist fundamental differences 

between, on the one hand, the medical and biotechnology communities and the intelligence community on the other. The differences 

go far beyond mere changes in goals and methods, but are in fact 

cultural and societal. Each of the two groups have vastly different 

ways of looking at the world, how they collect information and 

make sense of it, how they protect it and share it, and how they 

determine what actions to take based on their analysis and understanding of the information they collect. 

These differences, however, are not mutually exclusive, but merely the result of different inclinations, training and time horizons. 

One key aspect of these differences deals with the fact that when 

we discuss intelligence, we are discussing a prospective technique, 

i.e. a part of the process that leads to predicting the future based 

on information concerning the past and the present. This is fundamentally different from most of the medical and public health 

communities wherein they deal primarily with the present in a response role. In the field of biotechnology, however, intelligence is 

most akin to what we see in the commercial world wherein we try 

to predict trends for guidance in business strategy. 

That being said, it is absolutely vital to the safety and welfare 

of our nation that at some level these differences be overcome. As 

I alluded to earlier, two recent failures we have had or face now, 

the Chiron debacle and the avian influenza panic, are in large part 

direct results of failures in medical and biotechnology intelligence. 

The anthrax incidents highlighted many deficiencies as well. 

I should note that while two of these cases, one dealing with biotechnology, Chiron, and one dealing with disease/medicine, influenza, fall in the realm of naturally occurring events, the lessons 

and the failings are equally applicable to terrorism or deliberate 

acts as we saw with anthrax. 

I believe it is vital to recognize that there is no quick approach 

to improving the relationship between the intelligence and biosciences communities. We must change the mode of thought in the 

biosciences from observing what is to predicting what may be, and 

finally to how can we affect the future. The first step is intelligence 

in its broadest form. 

With this as a starting point, the question now becomes what 

should we do. I believe it is vital to increase both the overall 

awareness of intelligence and the mode of thought it offers among 

our medical, public health and biosciences communities. An excellent model is that presented by the Epidemiologic Intelligence 

Service. 

In the more extensive written testimony I have provided to the 

committee, you will find descriptions of a number of programs and 

agencies that touch on this important issue, as well as an outline 

for a program to leverage the capabilities of the Armed Forces 

Medical Intelligence Center, the CDC, and academia to create a 

cadre of trained, motivated and educated personnel who can raise 

awareness and knowledge throughout the bioscience community of 

intelligence and the role it can play. 
15

We can create trained observers with skills and capabilities that 

allow them to view problems, and the world around them in a new 

and critical way, one which will lead to new insights, and ultimately to the ability to prevent medical disasters and surprise, not 

merely respond to them. 

I would like to leave you with this final thought. The health and 

safety of our nation depends on our ability, not merely to respond 

to adversity, but to prepare for and hopefully to mitigate or prevent 

it. It has often been said with respect to disease that that which 

does not kill us makes us stronger. This, of course, is said by those 

who were made stronger, not those killed in the process. 

We must become stronger, but we must also minimize the number of those who will die as a result of our failure in predicting, 

and effectively responding to biological attacks and disasters. The 

only way to achieve this is through accurate and effective prediction and prevention of disaster. The means to achieve this is intelligence, leading to action and the adoption of biomedical institutions and protocols that strengthen this new paradigm. 

I am happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Hopmeier follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MICHAEL HOPMEIER

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2005

Chairman Linder, Ranking Member Langevin and committee members, I would 

like to thank you for this opportunity to discuss today an issue of paramount importance to our nation, the application and use of intelligence concepts and techniques 

to the biosciences, including medicine and biotechnology. As we have seen time and 

time again, and most recently in several problems that have arisen, such as the anthrax incidents, the Chiron troubles of last year, and the anticipated difficulties of 

the H5N1 Avian influenza pandemic now facing us, the need to anticipate events 

is tantamount to avoiding surprise and possibly disaster. 

To put my comments in context, I would like to provide you a brief summary of 

my background. I am currently President of a policy and engineering consulting 

firm, Unconventional Concepts, Inc. For the last decade, I have been involved in a 

number of senior policy positions as a Special Government Employee and a consultant. These have included chairing or membership on several Defense Science Board 

studies. I am currently the Special Advisor to the US Surgeon General on WMD and 

Homeland Security, Senior Science Advisor to the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary 

of Defense for Chemical and Biological Defense and an advisor or consultant to numerous other agencies and organizations. Included in my written testimony is a 

fuller CV for further details. 

I will use the term ‘‘intelligence’’ in my discussions this morning, and I think it 

is appropriate to define it. Intelligence, in the context of my discussion, is the product resulting from the collection, processing, integration, analysis, evaluation, and 

interpretation of available information concerning the biosciences, and factors affecting public health and medicine. 

I would like to note at this point, however, that even assuming that we were to 

‘‘fix’’ and improve the intelligence process associated with the biosciences, we must 

also be able, and willing, to act on what intelligence provides us. While action based 

on intelligence is not the topic of today’s testimony, please recognize that intelligence, in and of itself, is not a panacea; it is useless without the process, will and 

ability to act. 

To come right to the point, there exist fundamental differences between, on the 

one hand, the medical and biotech communities, and the intelligence community on 

the other. The differences go far beyond mere changes in goals and methods, and 

are in fact cultural and societal. Each of the two groups have vastly different ways 

of looking at the world, how they collect information and make sense of it, how they 

protect it and share it, and how they determine what actions to take based on their 

analysis and understanding of the information they collect. These differences, however, are not mutually exclusive, but merely the result of different inclinations, 

training and time horizons. 
16

One key aspect of these differences deals with the fact that, when we discuss ‘‘intelligence’’ we are discussing a prospective technique, i.e. a part of the process that 

leads to predicting the future based on information concerning the past and the 

present. This is fundamentally different from most of the medical and public health 

communities wherein they deal primarily with the present in a response role. In the 

field of biotechnology, however, intelligence is most akin to what we see in the commercial world wherein we try to predict trends for guidance in business strategy. 

That being said, it is absolutely vital to the safety and welfare of our nation that, 

at some level, these differences be overcome. As I alluded to earlier, two recent failures we have had or face now, the Chiron debacle and the Avian Influenza panic, 

are in large part direct results of failures in medical and biotechnology intelligence. 

The anthrax incidents highlighted many deficiencies as well. 

I should note that, while two of these cases, one dealing with biotechnology 

(Chiron) and one dealing with disease/medicine (influenza) fall in the realm of naturally occurring events, the lessons, and the failings, are equally applicable to terrorism or deliberate acts as we saw with anthrax. 

I believe it is vital to recognize that there is no quick approach to improving the 

relationship between the intelligence and the biosciences communities. We must 

change the mode of thought in the biosciences from observing what is to predicting 

what may be and finally to how can we affect the future. The first step is intelligence in its broadest form. 

With this as a starting point, the question now becomes ‘‘what should we do?’’ I 

believe that it is vital to increase both the overall awareness of intelligence, and the 

mode of thought it offers among our medical, public health and biosciences communities. An excellent model is that presented by the Epidemiologic Intelligence Service. In the more extensive written testimony I have provided to the Committee, you 

will find descriptions of a number of programs and agencies that touch on this important issue, as well as an outline for a program to leverage the capabilities of the 

Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center, the CDC and academia to create a cadre 

of trained, motivated and educated personnel who can raise awareness and knowledge throughout the bioscience community of intelligence and the role it can play. 

We can create trained observers with skills and capabilities that allow them to view 

problems, and the world around them, in a new and critical way, one which will 

lead to new insights, and ultimately to the ability to prevent medical disasters and 

surprise, not merely respond to them. 

I would like to leave you with this final thought. The health and safety of our 

nation depends on our ability, not merely to respond to adversity, but to prepare 

for, and hopefully mitigate or prevent it. It has often been said with respect to disease that that which does not kill us makes us stronger; this, of course, is said by 

those who were made stronger, not those killed in the process. We must become 

stronger, but we must also minimize the number of those who will die as a result 

of our failure in predicting, and effectively responding to biological attacks and disasters. The only way to achieve this is through accurate and effective prediction, 

and prevention, of disaster. The means to achieve this is intelligence, leading to action, and the adoption of biomedical institutions and protocols that strengthen this 

new paradigm. 

I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

Mr. LINDER. Thank you all. You give us a lot to think about. 

You each have said that we must have more intelligence to anticipate and hopefully prevent an activity. We are spending about 

$1 out of $8 on homeland security, taking things away from people 

on airplanes. We spend $4.2 billion taking things away from you. 

We spend less than $700 million a year on intelligence. 

Can the current intelligence community subsume this role? Dr. 

Relman? 

Dr. RELMAN. I believe it has the pieces and certainly the will to 

do so. I do not think it has the resources to do so. I think what 

they desperately need is a more robust fundamental scientific expertise base, as well as much more productive relationships with 

the outside scientific community. 

Mr. LINDER. Should that community be separate from the current intelligence agencies, a stand-alone bio intelligence community? 
17

Dr. RELMAN. I think they can be in both places simultaneously, 

enhanced within and supplemented by accessory without. 

Mr. LINDER. The biological community is an academic community, which instinctively is wide open. The intelligence community 

is a closed community. How do we get them to work together? 

Dr. RELMAN. It is extremely difficult, and a good question. It alludes to the cultural differences that Michael Hopmeier described. 

I think in many ways the two are beginning to see the needs and 

realities of the other. For example, I think that there is now a slow 

change in the thinking of the academic community in that we recognize there to be problems that must be looked at with a different 

perspective, and an imperative, a need to do so. 

Likewise, I think the intelligence community is beginning to see 

that in contrast to every other kind of threat they faced in past 

decades, this is one which today is large, tomorrow will be larger, 

and is inherently open. And they now realize that they, too, need 

to be in fact engaged out in the open-source world, in biology, but 

they are not there yet. 

Mr. LINDER. I had the director of the CIA down at Atlanta at the 

CDC last Friday. He would agree with you. 

Dr. Franz, how do you determine intent? 

Mr. FRANZ. It is very, very tough. As I said, it is the core of the 

problem. My experiences both in Russia with the trilaterals and in 

Iraq with UNSCOM demonstrated it is very difficult to measure intent. 

My subsequent experiences working in Russia with the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, where scientists and clinicians 

worked together on difficult common problems demonstrated to me 

that that kind of an approach may be as good as it is going to get. 

We can tear down walls and build this sort of culture of a little 

more openness if we are working together on these common problems. So I really like that approach. From my own perspective, I 

have learned more about intent that way than across a negotiating 

table. 

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Hopmeier, are there enough analysts in the 

world to do this job? 

Mr. HOPMEIER. Yes and no. I believe that there are a large number of analysts available. I believe the significant deficiency we 

have is that they are not sufficiently trained or focused. As I alluded to in my remarks, there is a cultural difference between the 

two communities, the intelligence and the biosciences/biomedical 

community. 

It is my opinion that I think we would find it much more effective and practical to try and train portions of the medical and biosciences community in aspects of intelligence, critical thinking, collection of information and analysis. 

And equally, if not more important, provide them an avenue and 

a vehicle to make that information available to those who can 

make use of it, interpret it, and take action, than it is to try and 

either create a whole new arm or capability or solely create that 

within the intelligence community, and try and train them in the 

biosciences. 

One of the specific aspects, as Dr. Relman and Dr. Franz have 

both noted, the biosciences community is a community. It is not a 
18

simple matter of blessing someone in the intelligence community 

and saying, you are now the czar of biosciences intelligence. You 

have to have people who have made contacts, worked in the community, understand the field, the discussions, can act one-on-one 

and be viewed as a peer to be able to be accepted. Otherwise, they 

will forever be on the outside of that. 

I believe the answer is somewhere between the two extremes of 

converting spies to medical personnel and converting doctors into 

spies, but instead being able to train the medical community in intelligence, but also training the intelligence community into how to 

absorb and make use of information that comes out of the medical 

and biosciences community. 

Mr. LINDER. If we did try to educate the spies in medical, what 

would you ask them to look for, since almost any agent they could 

use is dual-purpose? 

Mr. HOPMEIER. I think the question really becomes when we talk 

about intelligence, how broadly are we defining it? I believe that 

we may be mixing two broad, but yet related terms. In one case, 

intelligence with the biosciences can be considered the environment, the pathogens that may spread through it, the way that they 

in fact can move through the community, which includes both natural and manmade diseases and pathogens. 

There is a completely separate, yet related, category of the technologies, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, ability to manufacture and 

distribute vaccines, our ability to put in place plans. Ultimately, I 

think that when we look at intelligence and we create the models 

and the infrastructure, it needs to actually be independent of either 

intentional release or naturally occurring epidemics. Both of them 

will have significant impact, and frankly on our ability to respond. 

To plan and predict their spread, develop counter-measures for 

them, apply them, and protect our society should be independent 

of the cause for the simple reason that in many cases, we may not 

know the cause at all. 

I will remind you of well over a decade ago Legionnaire’s disease. 

If we created the stereotypical perfect example of a terrorist-release 

of an agent, Legionnaire’s disease was it, an unknown agent occurring in a very narrow period of time, affecting a very small and targeted population that occurred very rapidly and with very little 

ability to trace it. That was a completely natural event. 

I will give you a counter-example, the Rashneeshi cult, also a 

long time ago, many years ago. In that case, what we thought was 

a completely natural outbreak, we found out a year or more later 

was in fact intentional. If we focus on trying to determine intent, 

it only really addresses one small aspect of the problem that we 

have to deal with, and the ultimate goal is protecting our society, 

our people. That is independent of intent. 

Mr. LINDER. Thank you. My time has expired. 

Mr. Langevin? 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Hopmeier, I would like to actually continue on with the question that the chairman raised. You have may have already addressed this, but I would like to explore this a little more. You recommend again that we train medical personnel in intelligence and 
19

analysis. Are you suggesting that training intelligence personnel in 

medical and biosciences be equally effective? 

You also discussed in some of your background materials the 

idea of putting doctors trained in intelligence at all U.S. embassies 

overseas. Can you elaborate on the benefit of such a plan? 

I welcome the other witnesses to comment as well. 

Mr. HOPMEIER. My pleasure. 

First, let me note, there is a document that I provided to the 

staff, it is not available for public dissemination, I am afraid. It is 

a document from the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center titled ‘‘Medical Intelligence Tutorial.’’ That document is specifically 

designed to train medical personnel on what is intelligence, how to 

collect data and information, and how to analyze it. 

One of the most effective means our government has found in 

being able to collect and understand data, not only on emerging 

diseases, but also on endemic capabilities in different nations, are 

the different overseas labs that our Department of Defense maintains. We have labs throughout the world in a number of different 

areas, including Bangkok, Egypt and other regions, which were 

originally developed primarily to try and understand the diseases 

in those regions and how they affect military personnel. 

One of the anticipated, but very valuable consequences of having 

those labs distributed in many regions of the world was the relationship that those researchers had developed with the local public 

health communities, local academic and industrial infrastructure. 

Dr. Franz can certainly address that much better. He ran many of 

those laboratories when he was in the military. 

But I think the key benefit that came out was not just the shortterm knowledge of what diseases were endemic in any given region, 

but more importantly the longer-term relationships that have been 

developed between our government, the Department of Defense and 

the research laboratories, and the local public health communities, 

their militaries, the health officers and personnel in those militaries, and the public personnel. 

Ultimately again, we need to decide what is the best use of 

scarce resources. One of my recommendations, as you noted, was 

use of the embassies throughout the world to provide medical and 

public health advice, but more importantly interaction and expand 

the community of interaction worldwide, and not depend solely or 

almost solely on the World Health Organization and its other bodies, but be able to actively and aggressively reach out to these 

other communities through information sharing, identification of, 

in general, very open-source and public knowledge, but most importantly having a structure to be able to bring that back to those who 

can take action on it and make decisions based on it. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Would either of the other witnesses care to comment? 

Mr. FRANZ. I would just add that the point that Michael makes 

about relationships and longstanding relationships and building 

trust is so important, and that happens easily in the medical and 

the scientific communities. There are a number of instances in history where because of lack of communication, our imaginations or 

our adversary’s imaginations take over and they actually think bet-
20

ter than we do, and they were doing things that we were not really 

doing, and so on. 

I think that can lead or be a component in a cycle of proliferation. I believe that because the threats of bioterrorism and the 

technologies related to bioterrorism are so grossly overlaid with 

those tools and human resources that are related to emerging disease and to panic disease, this is a real opportunity. I think we 

have to be a little bit careful in making doctors spies, because we 

are going to undermine the real role and undermine the relationships and the understanding and the building that goes on. 

Secondly, the point I would make in the same context is that we 

sometimes I think within our intelligence community think about 

we are collectors of secrets. That may work in some technologies 

where we have this secret and this secret and this secret. The biological community is so complex that I think it is critical that we 

have an infrastructure or a framework on which to hang those occasional secret dots that we do have in order to connect the dots 

and bring them into context. 

So I think that is another reason for the importance of this broad 

understanding within our intelligence community and a close relationship between the intelligence community and the biological 

community. 

Dr. RELMAN. I would simply answer your question with a general 

question, which is what are the kinds of things we would like to 

observe in order to be able to anticipate biological threats that we 

face. 

I would answer that by saying there are two kinds of things we 

would like to observe. One is the activities, the ongoing activities 

and behavior of those engaged in the life sciences, as well as the 

natural state of affairs in the natural world. We would like to, for 

example, in the latter, understand what is the diversity of naturally occurring organisms, both pathogens and beneficial organisms, in order to anticipate what might arise or what one might 

be able to do with those organisms. 

Likewise, we would like to be able to know what are the normal 

kinds of activities that scientists engage in around the world? Because in both cases, what we are then looking for are aberrations. 

I think this was a question asked earlier. How do you recognize deliberate from natural? In both cases, you are looking for aberrations from the natural state. Until you understand this background, we cannot identify an aberration. 

I think the way to do both, again, is to simply be out in those 

worlds talking with, getting to know, observing activities of people 

around the globe, as well as observing nature around the globe. I 

know that CDC, for example, has talked about deploying their epidemiologists to understand what is the natural background of the 

microbiological organisms of the planet. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you. 

Mr. LINDER. The gentleman from Connecticut is recognized. 

Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the 

ranking member for sponsoring this very interesting and very significant discussion. 

I want to refer to the staff document page four where they quote 

the Silberman–Robb report as follows: ‘‘The gap in collection on the 
21

biological threat is largely attributable to the fact that the community,’’ that is the intelligence community, ‘‘is simply not well-configured to monitor the large stream of information, much of it publicly 

available, relevant to biological weapons.’’

Page two, from Dr. Hopmeier, ‘‘To come right to the point, there 

exists a fundamental difference between on the one hand the medical and biotech communities and the intelligence community on 

the other hand.’’

Mr. HOPMEIER. Absolutely. 

Mr. SIMMONS. To quote from Mr. Franz, ‘‘Intelligence is about 

sensitive or classified information. It is not about sharing and not 

about getting credit for one’s analysis and thought. Openness is not 

advocated,’’ et cetera, et cetera. 

And then, Mr. Relman, you refer to the open-source world. 

I worked for the CIA for 10 years as an operations officer, covert 

agent. I spent 35 years as a military intelligence officer. I just 

think we are barking up the wrong tree here. I do not think the 

intelligence community is capable of taking on this task. 

I remind everybody that the Robb–Silberman report recommended an open-source intelligence agency, an open-source 

agency, an organization focusing on open sources, which they 

placed in the CIA. I would not place it in the CIA. I would put it 

in the Department of Homeland Security because I think it lends 

itself absolutely to the mission of the Department of Homeland Security. 

When I go visit Pfizer in my district, their R&D center in Groton, 

several hundred million dollars of investment in R&D, and they 

tell me that advances in bioscience, for example treating diabetes 

with inhalants, as opposed to injections, but that that science and 

the development of that science, which is shared around the world, 

has tremendous applications for bioterrorism and bio-warfare. 

I wonder why we are not simply stepping back and saying, look, 

scientists do not want to be spies. They really don’t. If they did, 

they would have joined the CIA. They do not want to be spies, but 

they do want to protect their nation. They do want to protect their 

families. They do want to make their kind of contribution to the 

national security. 

So why is it that we continue to try to get the intelligence community to do what it does not want to do? Why don’t we step back 

and say it is time to develop a new organization which is going to 

be congenial to scientists, because it will not be a spy organization, 

which will contribute to the national security, which will use open 

sources of information for their analysis, and which will really be 

pertinent to the problem? Why don’t we do that? 

We have three very smart people. I would be happy to have it 

out. 

Mr. HOPMEIER. I will take a shot at it, to begin with. 

I believe first, sir, it is the idea that we are trying to create, 

make doctors into spies or more broadly the context, an analyst as 

a spy. I might point out that any reasonably competent industry 

analyst or stock analyst, especially in the biotechnology field, can 

probably answer 90 percent of the questions and issues that we all 

have on our mind today. What is the ability of industry to make 
22

vaccines? How quickly can they ramp up? What are the inherent 

problems in producing those vaccines and distributing them? 

There is an enormous industry-base today built solely around the 

business of collecting open source information on different fields, 

very specifically the biosciences, analyzing, interpreting and making predictions. Their purpose, frankly, is not national security. 

They certainly have an interest in protecting our nation, but their 

purpose more is they have many, many hundreds of billions of dollars to invest and the decisions that they make is to the effectiveness of industry. The ability to produce drugs is going to affect the 

investment portfolios of their customers. 

I work with several of those companies. One that I am familiar 

with, for example, a company called Gerson Lehrman has nearly 

160,000 medical and other technical professionals around the world 

that they ask questions to, funnel the information, and come up 

with conclusions, different conclusions that you gentlemen need, 

but the process is there and has been demonstrated. There is a 

large industrial base that has proven that possibility. I can tell you 

they certainly do not consider themselves spies, most of them, some 

may want to be. But for the most part, they do in fact do intelligence collection, analysis, and just simply based on the effectiveness of their portfolios, seem to be very effective. 

Mr. FRANZ. I would add that what you describe is my experience 

as well, in dealing with the intelligence community as a customer 

during my time at the Army’s Institute of Infectious Diseases, 

where we developed medical counter-measures. 

What I see is that it is very, very difficult to retain good people 

in the culture, in which they are asked often to read what looked 

like historical information, historical intelligence, not actual intelligence, and try to commingle that with the open literature if they 

had time, and then sort of dumb it down for the decision-makers. 

That is just not a fun job for a bright young scientist. So I see them 

occasionally hiring good people, but they quickly lose them. 

I think your approach with regard to the open approach to looking at the open literature is probably more effective. Dr. Relman 

mentioned the DIA Red Team. Our experience there I think has 

been very positive, where it is for the most part open communication between scientists and members of the intelligence community. 

I think they appreciate it a great deal. They learn a lot and we 

learn a lot in the process. 

Finally, I would just add that in conjunction with your, or sort 

of in parallel with your thoughts, I think exploiting or taking advantage and using the private sector is something that we could do 

in that kind of a system. We could encourage, rather than discourage international communication and transportation and working 

together. We could also probably sensitize that community to help 

us in the intelligence community to just better understand what is 

going on out there. Not secrets, not classified things, just what is 

going on for example that you mentioned at Pfizer and others, 

where new and cutting-edge technologies are being used. 

And then finally, I think also in accordance with your point, we 

need to understand that intelligence is just one of our tools in this 

process. It is an important one, but especially in the field of biology, I think it is just one wedge in our tool set. 
23

Dr. RELMAN. I would echo and agree with many of the comments 

of my colleagues. I keep finding myself almost a hopeless optimist 

about what might be doable. It is based in part upon some good 

experiences with members of the intelligence community. I truly 

believe there are individuals buried within those agencies who 

truly understand what really is needed and the kinds of relationships that need to be created, and have tried their hardest to do 

so. I would hate to see them pushed aside or in any way 

marginalized. 

But you are absolutely right. The nature of this problem is so immense that I do not believe any self-sustaining, self-sufficient agency or group can undertake what really is needed. 

Just to put this in a different kind of context, I think one of the 

most likely threats we face in the next 10 years or 15 years is not 

necessarily the actions of a person hell-bent on doing harm. It is 

the inadvertent, irresponsible actions of someone who was tinkering in biology. It is the next-generation bio-hacker. 

There are so many—I say this with some humility—there are so 

many kids out there who are so good at biological engineering because of kits, because of technologies. There are going to be people 

who are going to simply try doing interesting things for the fun of 

it. 

That is where my concern is. How do you deal with that? You 

need the entire community so sensitized that they recognize when 

untoward or irresponsible behavior is taking place and know what 

to do about their sense of this, to which they should speak. 

So given the nature of that problem, there is no one agency that 

is going to be able to place bounds on and take responsibility for 

this. There have to be bridges built. We have to take advantage of 

those individuals that are now in a variety of agencies who truly 

believe in this approach, and empower them, and knock down these 

walls, make all of these organizations and agencies talk together. 

Maybe it should be unified under one administrative entity, and 

Homeland Security might be a very good place for it, but it will 

have to be an integrative, expansive effort, not a single contained 

one. 

Mr. HOPMEIER. Gentlemen, could I add one other comment 

please? 

I think that it is telling to realize that if we went back 65 years 

ago, we could be sitting around having this discussion concerning 

physics and nuclear engineering. If we went back 20 or 25 years 

ago, we could be having the same discussion concerning computer 

science and the Internet. We have a new field that is evolving and 

developing. The intelligence community and the rest of our government adapted to the threat of nuclear war. It adapted to the 

vulnerabilities of the Internet and computer sciences have created. 

And today we are on the eve of biosciences. We may solve this 

problem today, but in 10 or 15 or 20 years, there may be another 

problem that we are sitting to deal with. 

So I think it is instructive to note the technological surprise, 

changes, space, nuclear science, biology. All of these will continue 

to come up and we will have to address all of them in some way. 

Mr. LINDER. The time of the gentleman is up. 

The gentleman from Washington? 
24

Mr. DICKS. The only thing I would say is, I served for 8 years 

on the Intelligence Committee. I can see certain circumstances 

when if you have like the Soviet Union, with a massive program, 

that you would have to have intelligence about that, especially 

since that program was kept in secret. Let’s say a future adversary, 

maybe the future adversary might have a program that would require us to have intelligence on that program. I would think it 

would be helpful to have people with some scientific background in 

order to look into this. 

Now, if I could just switch and go to what we have now, and get 

your comments a little bit on some of these entities. One is the 

Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center, headquartered at Fort 

Detrick as a branch of the Defense DIA, and has the mission to 

provide all sorts of intelligence on foreign infectious diseases and 

environmental health risks, foreign military and civilian health 

care systems and infrastructures, and foreign biomedical development and life-science technologies of military-medical significance 

to the U.S. armed forces. 

How would you rate that organization? Is this the one you have 

been talking about? 

Mr. HOPMEIER. Yes, sir. 

First, I think you need to realize AFMIC I happen to consider is 

a very good organization. They have a long and distinguished history, but their focus is exclusively on those issues related to the 

military. 

Mr. DICKS. Right. 

Mr. HOPMEIER. So they have the infrastructure and the capability, but they are funded, resourced and focused on issues directly 

of military importance and relevance. As a model and as a source 

of process for other entities and organizations, I think that they 

would be excellent. 

If what you are asking is could they undertake this role for the 

broader homeland security mission, I do not believe so for two reasons. One, it would take a significant investment to expand and increase them to have that capability, more so perhaps than creating 

a new entity. Two, and more importantly, I am afraid it would unacceptably dilute their mission and their focus on protecting the 

military. 

Mr. DICKS. But it is a model of an agency that has this mission 

of looking at these kinds of issues, both from a scientific and from 

an intelligence perspective. Isn’t that correct? 

Mr. HOPMEIER. Absolutely. 

Mr. DICKS. Let me just move on. The Epidemic Intelligence Service, which is located at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, how would 

you rate that program? Any comments on that? 

Dr. RELMAN. They are an outstanding group with, again, a somewhat different mission. Their mission is to describe and explain 

natural events of infectious origin and to understand the epidemiology of the world of infectious agents around the globe. They focus, 

of course, on the United States. They have excellent skill sets in 

understanding patterns and recognizing perturbed or aberrant patterns. 
25

But their expertise is not, for example, in technology, in the future of the biological sciences and their impact on what might be 

now advanced or reengineered threats. 

Mr. DICKS. If you were going to create a new entity at the Department of Homeland Security, what would you want it to be like? 

What kind of capabilities would you like it to have? 

Dr. RELMAN. Again, I think it depends upon its mission. If it is 

to anticipate this enormous spectrum of potential threats—

Mr. DICKS. Right. 

Dr. RELMAN. —it must have several features. 

It must understand how we go about describing and understanding the natural world. So it would have to be epidemiologists 

of the CDC sort. It would have to understand the scientific basis 

for how we understand these entities. It would have to include academic and private sector scientists. And it would have to understand how to anticipate trajectories in technologies in sciences 10 

or 15 years out. That, too, would include a wide variety of people 

with different expertise and disciplines from a variety of sectors. It 

is really a compilation of many kinds of agencies. 

Mr. DICKS. And it would have to be able to relate, I assume, to 

the CDC, to the World Health Organization, to NIH, to all these 

entities that are out there following these issues on a day-by-day 

basis. I agree there with the gentleman that ought to be in the 

open, I think, and I think you could get a lot of information, just 

like we have been following the avian flu and watched what happened with SARS. It was not handled properly by the PRC. 

It just seems to me that we this ought to be done at the Department of Homeland Security, and have it work with these agencies. 

It would develop and evolve, but it would be able to work with all 

these other existing entities, and that would be a great way to 

start, if we were going to do something. 

Dr. RELMAN. If I could just interject, there is, of course, as you 

I am sure know, the Biological Threat Characterization Center as 

part of DHS. They have part of that as their mission, but in my 

humble opinion, it is a limited effort. It is a very limited and narrow effort right now. 

Mr. DICKS. Dr. Franz or anyone else like to comment on this? 

Mr. FRANZ. I would agree. These areas are so overlapping. 

I often define ‘‘biological terrorism’’ as emerging infectious disease plus intent. Everything that David has said and that you have 

said I think is right on-target. We have go to integrate all this. 

Back in the mid–1990s or so, AFMIC, before it went to DIA, covered both the natural threats, which I think is its focus today, as 

well as the bio-warfare threats. We were not thinking about terrorism. I think that was very useful to have that kind of an integrated agency. 

Today, the bio-warfare has sort of moved to DIA, and AFMIC has 

retained its mission primarily of looking at natural threats, and 

again to the force, as Michael said. So I think we need to, rather 

than separate, we need to integrate in all of these areas to bring 

the science and the intelligence, where possible, together. 

Mr. DICKS. We have done these counter-terrorism centers, 

counter-proliferation centers. I could see a center on this issue that 

would be kind of the repository for all the efforts that are going on 
26

in the government. They would pull it all together in this center 

at DHS. It seems to me that would be a very logical thing to do. 

Mr. HOPMEIER. I would agree, with one addition, sir. AFMIC, unlike many of the other research centers, not only is able to collect 

and analyze data, but its output. Ultimately what comes out of a 

center, an agency has over many years evolved to actually be something useful, or what we would refer to as actionable. When 

AFMIC collects data, one of the things that comes out is information, reports, documents that a battlefield commander up through 

the Secretary of Defense or the President himself, if necessary, can 

look at, interpret and take an action on. 

Part of the problem in the biosciences is I do not think that in 

the civilian community we have evolved to that point. If we take 

a look at the expedition of the current pandemic flu plan, it is a 

wonderful policy. It has vague guidelines, some specific data, but 

it is not something that a community, a police force, a different 

government agency can actually take specific action on. 

So I would extend your observation to be that not only do we 

have to analyze and collect intelligence, we have to be able to 

produce something that is actionable and of value other than as an 

interesting academic exercise. 

Mr. DICKS. To the first responders around the country? 

Mr. HOPMEIER. At all levels. The first responders absolutely, but 

it may be CDC or HHS. DHS attempted with its 15 scenarios to 

prevent a baseline for planning at all levels of the government, 

whether you agree or disagree is immaterial. 

But they provided a set of basic scenarios and threats to plan to, 

all the way from the very lowest to the highest level. If we embark 

on an area of doing intelligence for the biosciences, I think we have 

to keep firmly in mind what the goal is. The goal is to be able to 

do something with that data. 

Mr. DICKS. Thank you. 

Mr. LINDER. We will have another round, too. 

Dr. Franz, does each American embassy have a medical officer? 

Mr. FRANZ. I do not know. 

Mr. HOPMEIER. There is a medical person. However, it is not frequently a physician. In many cases, I believe they actually use the 

indigenous personnel. They hire out to local personnel. 

Mr. LINDER. Since each embassy has a lot of employees, many of 

whom are hired locally, and they are in the community at all times, 

if we focused on the medical personnel in the embassy to focus on 

open source information, would that be helpful? 

Mr. FRANZ. I think it probably would to some degree. That would 

be part of the solution. I do not think it would be a really comprehensive solution because of the nature of the work. At least in 

the one embassy that I have been closely involved with, the medical person probably would not know as much about what is going 

on in that country as we might hope, certainly not as much as scientists or public health individuals who are collaborating with the 

population of that country. But it certainly could be a piece of the 

puzzle. 

Mr. LINDER. The director of the CDC tells me that she has been 

approached by several international firms who are concerned about 
27

these kinds of natural outbreaks because of the cost to their employees and the cost to their bottom line. 

Would there be any interest, do you think, in approaching some 

of these people who have headquarters here, but who have thousands and thousands of employees in other countries? Could we 

train them to look for things, I guess is the question. 

Mr. FRANZ. I have been involved in other initiatives, or am involved in another initiatives related to multinational companies 

and trying to get them involved in sort of undermining the popular 

support for terrorism by being good citizens and so on in other 

countries. You use the right word. The bottom line is what is really 

important in persuading or in discussions with these groups. 

I think it depends a little bit on the culture of the specific organization you are going to. Some are much more interested than others. But that is part of this sort of loose, but very broad network 

that I am alluding to in my second point with regard to who we 

need to sensitive, who we need to work with. Integration is the key. 

We have to got to pull it all together. 

Dr. RELMAN. There is an interesting initiative by Terence Taylor 

from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He and his 

colleagues, he is based here in Washington as well as London, have 

been trying to get together groups of CEOs from large multinational corporations and talk about ways of sensitizing their 

workers to issues of biological security. 

It has been I think very encouraging, the reception that he has 

had from a number of companies, not all, because they see it as 

part of their own self-interest to prevent something untoward from 

arising from their own collaborative activities or from their own 

people, as well as the consequences for their own people overseas. 

So I think that is, again, one piece of a network. 

Another kind of network is the public health distributed global 

network. I will give you an example. The French have a long history of investment in their Pasteur Institute. The Pasteur Institute 

has satellites around the globe. They have one in Tehran. They 

have one in Dakar, Senegal. At each of these places, they have 

longstanding working relationships with local scientists. If I wanted to know what was going on in Tehran today, the first place I 

would go would be the Pasteur Institute in Tehran. 

If we had that kind of satellite public health relationship with 

similar kinds of organizations around the globe, through our CDC 

for example, that would be immensely helpful. 

Mr. LINDER. CDC is currently in 47 nations around the globe 

with very good relationships with the local health agencies. 

Dr. Relman, you referred two or three times now to state-of-theart technology in biosciences. Explain that to me. 

Dr. RELMAN. The state-of-the-art, of course, is a moving edge, but 

it is an interface between multiple disciplines. It is an evolving 

kind of science and technology that is discovery-oriented, unpredictable and highly dynamic. But that frontier changes the way in 

which science and technology are executed, and it changes the way 

we think about the potential future threats. It is hard to operate 

at that frontier, at that edge, unless you are out there talking constantly with your colleagues and thinking about the thoughts that 

they have shared with you. 
28

Mr. LINDER. Dr. Franz, would it be in our interest to follow some 

of these scientists who are very, very well trained in life science, 

microbiology or genetic engineering, who are trained in London and 

then moved to Pakistan? Would it be in our interest to know where 

these people were, or are there too many of them to know who they 

are? 

Mr. FRANZ. The best example I am familiar with with regard to 

attempting to do that was the focus of the Nunn–Lugar Program 

in the former Soviet Union. I think it was very difficult to track 

individual scientists, at least down beyond a certain level. 

One of my concerns related to that today is that if you go to any 

university in the U.S. and talk to the registrar or to the dean of 

the graduate school, you will find that we are not training as many 

people from overseas as we used to. They are now going to France 

or to Germany or other places. 

I think that we are losing an opportunity there. Certainly, we 

have to be careful who we let into the country and so on, but I 

think in biology the situation is such that barbed wire fences and 

even paper fences that we put up do not always make us safer. So 

I think following scientists or working with scientists is, as you 

suggested, very important. 

I am going to leave with the staff a recent report. It is actually 

just a pre-publication copy. I chair a standing committee at the National Academy on our scientific relationships with the former 

weapons programs of the Soviet Union, Biopreparat in the Ministry 

of Defense, which we are not in, but we are in Biopreparat and all 

over that. 

I have come to a point of believing that, I call it bio-warfare in 

our rearview mirror. I think we need to be looking forward to ways 

of collaborating in disease surveillance, international disease surveillance, bringing their programs into the world community, reporting to the WHO; technologies, working together on technologies; working together on public health and infectious diseases. 

That is essentially the essence of this report, which is entitled Biological Science and Biotechnology in Russia: Controlling Disease 

and Enhancing Security. 

I think as we have moved in that direction, I have seen a lot 

more openness. Now, it does not make us totally safe and it does 

not mean there is not a program within the MOD, but I think that 

I have seen a lot more openness as we have worked together on 

these common problems. 

Mr. LINDER. Thank you. 

The gentleman from Rhode Island? 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Your testimony today has been fascinating. I appreciate what 

you had to say. 

I want to back to Dr. Hopmeier, if I could. You mentioned that 

you feel that the failure of the Chiron Company to provide flu vaccine last winter and now the avian influenza situation are examples of intelligence failings. With respect to avian flu, certain countries were not exactly forthcoming with information. 

Can you elaborate on this as an intelligence failing and how 

would intelligence have helped weather the Chiron situation, in 
29

particular, or aid us in dealing with avian flu and influenza issues 

now? 

The other thing I will ask, on Tuesday the President announced 

his plan to combat the avian flu epidemic. One part of the plan was 

to enhance bio-surveillance, meaning worldwide epidemiology and 

providing detection in as near real-time as possible. 

I will ask each of you, while everyone agrees it is a good idea, 

I am interested in how long it is actually going to take to build that 

worldwide bio-surveillance capacity. 

Mr. HOPMEIER. To address your first question, the Chiron and 

the avian flu are examples of the two widely disparate applications 

of intelligence I mentioned earlier. In Chiron, it was a biosciences, 

a technology failing and problem. 

To take an analogy, if we have a dependence on a key material, 

cobalt, for example, or oil, we would regularly and consistently 

track not only all of the producers and manufacturers and refiners 

of oil, as one example, but the sources of key materials, parts, 

trained personnel, whether they are following the plans and procedures one would expect for regular maintenance and ongoing operations. We would know well in advance if a problem were developing with a key oil refinery. 

Mr. SHAYS. Could the gentleman just define what ‘‘we’’ means? 

Mr. HOPMEIER. I am sorry; forgive me. The general community, 

the national security community, including the intelligence community. 

If I were following a strategic material, for example, I would specifically look in oil to the Department of Energy and their tracking 

of key refineries and key sources of material; for another like chromium or cobalt, it would be one aspect of the intelligence community or the Department of Defense, if they have the key mission. 

I am using the broadest term of the U.S. government. I apologize 

for not being clear. 

I think that that derives from the recognition that there are key 

materials that are considered strategic assets or strategic materials. We have never looked at that. That seems in pharmaceuticals 

to be a strategic asset key to our national security, so the infrastructure that has traditionally gone with those does not exist and 

is not there. If it had been, there have since, in retrospect, been 

many signs and indicators associated with Chiron and its inability 

to meet its obligations last year that would have told us early. Seeing that would have been one part of it; being able to take action 

would have been another. 

In the case of the H5N1 or any other expanding strain of flu or 

pathogen for that matter throughout the world, surveillance, environmental monitoring, tracking of the changes of disease and disease patterns throughout the world give us early indications of potential problems of disease. We know that H5N1 has been known 

to exist for a number of years, ‘‘we,’’ the academic community. We 

know roughly how it would be able to mutate. In fact, the current 

pandemic plan was under development for 5 or 6 years. 

It has suddenly taken a trigger for us to realize that we need to 

look back at the signs and indicators we had in the past and come 

to the conclusion that yes, there was a warning many years ago, 

but we did not have the process or the ability to be able to exploit 
30

and take action years in advance of the problem, so we are now 

forced back up against the wall to try and address the problem at 

the very last minute. 

I think that answers your key question, sir. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Yes, thank you. 

With respect to the timeframe, though, of developing a real-time 

bio-surveillance capacity. I would like each of you to step up. 

Mr. FRANZ. A couple of issues there. I am very interested in that 

approach I think it is necessary. There are a couple of barriers that 

I see. 

One is economic. If you recall in the early to mid–1990s, there 

was a plague outbreak in India. It was really hard to get information about that. It is not good advertising for tourism, for example, 

to advertise that you have a plague outbreak in your country. 

The other one is sort of cultural. I think there is a key point that 

I would like to make with regard to this worldwide disease surveillance program. I think it needs to be a disease surveillance program. The best example I can give is our experience from West 

Nile, where we had sort of a smokestack or a siloed system. Crows 

were dying in New York City in June of 1999, I think it was, and 

humans were dying in New York City at the same time, but it took 

us until September to make a definitive diagnosis that it was West 

Nile, to some degree because we were looking for animal disease 

in crows and we were looking for human disease in humans, and 

it is very important to integrate that. 

I work with both the Ministry of Health in Russia and the Ministry of Agriculture and just spent some time with both ministries 

about 10 days ago. They have now learned their lesson, I believe, 

with regard to integrating and looking for disease, and not for animal disease here and human disease there. We had the wakeup 

call in 1999, but those are cultures that are in silos that are very 

hard to break down. 

It is a little bit like getting the intelligence community and the 

scientific community together. We need to get the ag community 

and the human disease community together and working very 

closely because about 75 percent of emerging diseases are zoonotic, 

that is diseases that are transmissible between humans and animals. 

Dr. RELMAN. Just a few additional comments about your question. I agree with everything that has been said. The two challenges, of course, are both environmental and medical. We would 

like to know, for instance in this case, what the viruses are that 

are out there and how they are evolving. We also would like to 

know what disease activity looks like and its cause. 

There is one additional technical barrier I will just bring to your 

attention. We are not very good at clinical microbiological diagnosis 

right now. We have a clinical definition of influenza or flu-like illness. It is very non-specific. We can detect the influenza virus in 

a person certainly, but there is an attendant delay. It is not rapid. 

The ability to then sequence and understand the nature of the 

virus is even longer. 

I would suggest that to make the timeline a satisfactory timeline, 

we need to also put emphasis on early disease diagnosis. There are 

some technologies and science that would radically change the way 
31

in which we recognize early disease as due to X, Y, or Z. So I guess 

in answer to your question, 1 to 2 years now for characterizing viruses in various sites, putting the political and economic issues 

aside. But for specific early clinical diagnosis, I think we are still 

3 to 5 years away at best. 

Mr. HOPMEIER. If I could add one comment on surveillance. I 

think there is frequently a very fundamental misunderstanding of 

what is medical surveillance versus environmental surveillance and 

how they come together. You, I believe, referred to it as real-time 

worldwide surveillance. 

If I take a look at medical surveillance and the concept of realtime, is real-time determined from the point at which somebody is 

exposed to a disease, they become infected, sick, enter a laboratory, 

have a test done, have the result reported? Depending on the disease and your end-state of definition, that could be a difference of 

more than 2 weeks. We do not have a common understanding of 

terminology and what surveillance means. 

Further, and even more fundamentally, I believe surveillance is 

used as a panacea, as a silver bullet without a clear understanding 

of why we have it or what we are going to do with the information 

we get. 

An example I have used many times, set aside the technology 

question completely. Forget issues of privacy; forget how rapidly we 

can detect a piece of information. If I was able to do all of that perfectly in real-time, what does the information provide you? How do 

you plan on using that data? For the most part, surveillance has 

been very technology-driven. We have a new capability to measure 

the sale of over-the-counter drugs. Let’s survey it and collect data. 

We have ICD–9 codes for syndromic surveillance. Let’s collect all 

that data into one place or a number of emergency room beds. 

Very, very little thought has been given to why do we do surveillance, how will we use that information, and using those requirements to drive the evolution of the capability. 

Mr. LINDER. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The gentleman from Connecticut? 

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. 

Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[Laughter.] 

I do have a question about Plum Island, but because the distinguished vice chairman of the full committee has arrived, my colleague from Connecticut, I yield my 5 minutes to my colleague from 

Connecticut. 

Mr. SHAYS. I am blushing. 

First, to you, Mr. Chairman, I consider the work you have done, 

with your ranking member, outstanding. 

I have been involved in this issue a long time, with my National 

Security Subcommittee. I consider this committee, its task dealing 

with nuclear and biological, hugely important. The likelihood of 

such attack is small, but the consequence is almost beyond comprehension, if attacks happen. 

I want to side with what I believe my colleague from Connecticut 

has said, and that is that we need to know the private, basically, 

government data with the public data. If we do not, we are going 

to fail. I also think that he is headed in the direction of basically 
32

saying it comes out of the intelligence community, and should be 

somewhere with DHS, which then gets me to my interest in getting 

your view of the World Health Organization. I first want to say to 

you that I feel like it is an underutilized organization. I feel like 

it is underfunded. The folks that I meet there are incredibly intelligent and dedicated. They will literally go to the deepest parts of 

the world with an outbreak, not knowing what the consequence 

may be. 

So I would like you to speak more specifically as to how the 

World Health Organization plays a role in the intelligence-gathering. Is that something that has already been discussed? Okay. 

Mr. HOPMEIER. I have done a good deal of work, in fact I am a 

senior advisor with the Office of Deliberate Epidemics within the 

World Health Organization. That office was set up about 3 years 

ago specifically to look at the issue of the changes, the differences 

that one would see in the issue of a deliberate epidemic, a bioterrorism or bio-warfare incident versus an actual outbreak. 

The key difference, frankly, had nothing to do with response so 

much as who was in charge. In the case of a naturally occurring 

epidemic of one sort of another, it would almost be purely ministries of health or the public health organizations. In the case of 

a deliberate incident, suddenly it takes on national security overtones and involves intelligence and law enforcement and such. 

The biggest problem within the WHO is again a cultural one. 

They are not used to thinking in those terms. They are an almost 

purely academic organization. I can speak from very personal and 

first-hand experience some of the difficulties we have had trying to 

get the management, Dr. Lee and the senior staff of ADGs there 

to understand and accept that this is a key issue. 

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just put affirmation on that. A few years ago, 

my staff and I went to the World Health Organization and requested a meeting to understand how they were dealing with 

pathogens that may be incentivized by humans, in other words, 

weapons. They did not know what I was talking about. So we specifically requested, we went below management and set up this 

meeting, and then we invited the head of the World Health Organization to sit in. He had all his parts there. It was stunning what 

the people down below knew and were thinking about, and it was 

just like he was in a foreign country. He was shocked to see this. 

We were pleased that at least down below they were thinking 

about it. 

Mr. HOPMEIER. I have observed that very directly. I believe that 

there are some changes for the better. Do you gentleman know Dr. 

Ken Bernard? He used to be the senior medical adviser on the National Security Council. He has since retired and is currently a special adviser to Dr. Lee, the director general of WHO. That indicates 

to me that there is some interest at the highest level. 

Mr. SHAYS. Let me interrupt that. What do we do to, first off, is 

there a need? If you could just all three quickly. Is there a need 

to get the World Health Organization more engaged? The next 

question is, in the short answer, how do we do it, if the answer is 

yes? Is there a need? 

Mr. HOPMEIER. Yes, sir, there is. 
33

Mr. SHAYS. Okay. Let me just go through. Is there a need to get 

the World Health Organization more involved in this? 

Mr. FRANZ. Yes. I would like to elaborate very briefly. 

Mr. SHAYS. I will come back to you. 

Mr. FRANZ. Okay. 

Dr. RELMAN. Absolutely, yes. 

Mr. SHAYS. Okay. Elaborate. 

Mr. FRANZ. I, working again with the Russians, for example, or 

with other countries talking about international disease surveillance, they do not like to hear a ‘‘made in the USA’’ disease surveillance program. So I think it is very important, whether it is agriculture or human health that we go to an international body. That 

gives them a great deal of comfort. We are more likely to gain information about what is going on if it goes through the WHO than 

if we try to collect it. 

Mr. SHAYS. Anybody else want to elaborate quickly as to how we 

can incentivize them to be involved? 

Mr. FRANZ. I would just add that I also work, in fact I am going 

to be in Geneva, I will be meeting with Ken and with the people 

that do the deliberate epidemics next week. 

Mr. SHAYS. First off, I envy you. Nice place to go. 

Mr. FRANZ. It is. 

What I find there is that it is one person and one program, like 

one riot and one ranger. They just are so under-resourced and they 

are dependent. The project I am working on them with is funded 

by the Sloan Foundation to do things related to what we are talking about. So resourcing is a huge problem. 

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. WHO needs resources and funds. Second, 

a much more productive relationship with the working life-science 

research community. They have tended to be somewhat separated 

from that big worldwide community. 

Thank you. 

Mr. HOPMEIER. Yes, sir. I believe resources are important, but 

more importantly is more than paying lip service to the importance 

of deliberate epidemics. I can tell you from personal knowledge and 

experience, while we have said at a very high level, the secretary 

level, that it is an important issue, WHO is then left to set its own 

internal priorities. And frankly, deliberate epidemics is a low priority. We do not enforce with other nations out belief of what is important, and it gets lost in the bureaucracy very frequently. 

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you all very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. LINDER. The gentleman from Washington? 

Mr. DICKS. Have you gentlemen been following the Bioshield Program at all? 

Dr. RELMAN. Peripherally. 

Mr. FRANZ. Yes, very much so. 

Mr. DICKS. Okay. I am very concerned this program is not getting off the ground. For example, should we put into place deadlines for the DHS to finish material threat assessments on all 60 

of the biological agents listed on the CDC Web site? 

Mr. HOPMEIER. I personally do not believe putting in place arbitrary deadlines, no matter how well-founded, is the answer. I think 

the primary shortcoming is a lack of specific process and under-
34

standing. We have a vague mission: here are the threats, which are 

most important, how to address them. There is no specificity as to 

how to prioritize those threats or what we mean and define by addressing them. 

Simply putting in place deadlines I do not think will answer the 

fundamental problem here. 

Mr. DICKS. What concerns me is that only four of the material 

threat assessments have been done at this juncture. 

Mr. FRANZ. I personally think that when you are talking about 

Bioshield, you are by definition talking about medical countermeasures. 

Mr. DICKS. Right. 

Mr. FRANZ. Specific medical counter-measures for emerging disease or for bioterrorism, there will be I believe a very small number of agents for which we can develop counter-measures. I have 

a set of outliers in my mind. I call them outliers, smallpox, anthrax 

and foot and mouth disease. Foot and mouth disease is not a 

human pathogen, but an animal pathogen and economic threat. 

Those I can see my way forward, developing vaccines for. There is 

a good reason to have a vaccine for anthrax. There is a good reason 

to have a vaccine for smallpox, technically and medically. 

You get very far down that list and in our current system where 

it takes 6, 8, or 10 years in the tech base and 10 or 12 or 15 years 

in advanced development and production, it is just not feasible to 

use a prophylactic medical counter-measure to protect against a 

long list of threat agents. If you look at the concept of operation, 

there is just not a way to use them. 

I think on the other hand, broad-spectrum antibiotics and broadspectrum anti-viral drugs, which can be used therapeutically, are 

very useful. I do not know what the law says now with regard to 

dual-use. Initially, it said we can only spend this money on drugs 

that are not dual-use, orphan drugs that are useful only for terrorist incidents, and I am not sure whether that has been changed. 

Mr. DICKS. Do any of you follow the radiation issues? 

Mr. HOPMEIER. I have a little. 

Mr. DICKS. That is one where there are companies out there that 

have tried to work with the DHS and with HHS, and they just 

have totally been frustrated by the approach that is being taken. 

They have spent millions of dollars. They have asked for a contract, 

assuming that they can get through the FDA procedures. And they 

have just struck out with the department. 

To me, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of lives if we 

do not have some kind of medical thing you can take within a certain number of hours after an attack. For the department to do 

nothing about this is kind of shocking to me. 

Mr. HOPMEIER. I would not say that they are doing nothing, sir. 

I think that the problem is that they are mired in a bureaucracy 

which is not applicable to this arena. The underlying premise for 

Bioshield was, one, that there was a problem in production and 

incentivizing the manufacture of limited-use counter-measures, orphan drugs, if you will. That is correct and I absolutely agree with 

it. 

The second part of that was that the simple solution was let’s set 

aside a pot of money and give them a little bit more money. That 
35

I think is fundamentally wrong. It is not an issue of any level of 

funding that our government could actually appropriate and apply. 

To put it quite frankly and bluntly, the entire United States of 

America is not a large enough market for these drugs to justify real 

economic interest within these industries. If we are going to try 

and incentivize them, we have to truly understand what drives 

them, the size of their market, and work with them, not try and 

artificially impose a requirement. Here is $5.8 billion over 10 years. 

Frankly, gentlemen, that is nothing in the pharmaceutical industry, for everything. 

We need to be more intelligent and more enlightened about how 

they work, what they need, and how to work with them. This is 

not the Department of Defense in the 1970s where it could call the 

tune for everything. The markets are just much, much larger than 

we are. 

Mr. DICKS. From the military perspective, should the military 

have these shots that can be taken to protect people from radiation 

syndrome? 

Mr. FRANZ. I do not know that topic very well to comment, sir. 

Mr. DICKS. All right. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Simmons is recognized. 

Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Again, congratulations. 

Mr. SHAYS. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman. Isn’t it my time? 

[Laughter.] 

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. SIMMONS. Boy, so congenial. Great. I thank the gentleman 

for yielding to me. 

Mr. SHAYS. The gentleman is welcome. 

Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman and the Ranking 

Member, for this very interesting and far-reaching discussion of a 

critically important issue. 

I would like, if I could for a moment, to kind of bring it back 

down to an issue of particular interest to me. 

Foot and mouth disease was mentioned. I believe one of the few 

areas of the country, maybe the only area in the country where we 

do extensive research on foot and mouth disease is at the Plum Island Animal Research Center on Plum Island, New York. This activity used to be supported by Agriculture. It was transferred to the 

Department of Homeland Security. The department is currently 

undergoing an examination of how it is going to be doing a lot of 

research. 

There is some discussion of whether Plum Island will be closed; 

whether research on hoof and mouth disease should be moved to 

the Midwest somewhere. Ames, Iowa does not seem to be a good 

idea to me. That is where you have a lot of hogs and a lot of other 

cloven-hoofed animals. Whereas currently, Plum Island is surrounded by a moat of Long Island Sound, which is pretty safe. 

Plum Island, the Animal Research Institute, should this become 

more of a center in the Department of Homeland Security for bioterrorism research and analysis? Can we build on this? Do you feel 

that the department really has a mission for this facility at this 
36

point in time? Is there value in building around what we have already created at Plum Island, but enhance it based on the current 

mission of the Department of Homeland Security to defend us 

against a bioterrorist threat? 

Mr. FRANZ. I have given some thought to the agricultural threat 

problem. I mentioned it in my short list of outliers. 

Mr. SIMMONS. Yes, you did. One was foot and mouth disease. 

Mr. FRANZ. When we are talking about agriculture, we are thinking about dollars not about people’s lives, for the most part. These 

are not zoonotics. Foot and mouth disease is a disease of animals, 

and the estimates I have seen are $40 billion to $60 billion should 

we have an outbreak in this country. So you can measure it in dollars, not in human lives. 

I believe that is one that we should do everything we can to deal 

with once we have an outbreak. It is so easy, if you see in my written statement, I talk about a spectrum of easy-to-hard for a terrorist group. Foot and mouth disease is this much material, pretty 

stable, carried across from Europe or Asia or Africa today, and 

wiped on the nose of a friendly dairy cow in Iowa and it takes off. 

It is the most contagious and one of the most infectious organisms 

that we know. So I think it is one that we really need to think 

about. 

I do not think it has to be protected by a moat. As you may 

know, I ran USAMRIID, the Army’s Institute of Infectious Diseases, where we have a lot of bad bugs. I believe we are capable 

of containing that organism within walls with appropriate handling 

systems and procedures and facilities and equipment. That is probably not the argument here today, but I think we can work it in 

other places within the country safely. 

With regard to Plum Island’s role as a bioterrorism threat evaluation center, I think it is part of that hub-and-spoke model that 

DHS has and will eventually have a building and will become the 

center of. I think that they need to work closely, but I would be 

concerned about taking the scarce resources that we have at Plum 

Island and focusing them too much on threat analysis and threat 

characteristics. I think they need to be working on counter-measures and let the threat people tell them what they believe the 

counter-measures are that need to be developed. 

Mr. SIMMONS. I thank the gentleman. 

I yield back. 

Thank you all very much. 

Mr. LINDER. Thank you very much for your time. Of all the subcommittee hearings we have sat through, this has been the most 

interesting to me. We may be talking to you again. 

Without objection, the hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:38 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 
(37)

BIOSCIENCE AND THE INTELLIGENCE 

COMMUNITY: CLOSING THE GAP 

PART II 

Thursday, May 4, 2006

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR

AND BIOLOGICAL ATTACK, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:50 p.m., in Room 

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Linder [chairman 

of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Linder, Langevin, and Norton. 

Mr. LINDER. The Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack will come to order. We are here to hear testimony 

on ‘‘BioScience and the Intelligence Community (Part II): Closing 

the Gap.’’ 

I want to thank our distinguished panel of witnesses for being 

here today. Last November this subcommittee heard from academic 

experts about the continuous link between the Bioscience and Intelligence Communities. During that hearing the witnesses gave us 

an image of an intelligence community that is increasingly hard 

pressed to face the explosion of biotechnology, making it more difficult to identify and mitigate biologic threats. 

The testimony highlights what I consider to be a very real problem. As we know, the science community is inherently open, and 

the free flow of ideas is key to developing new and innovative technologies. Their openness, however, has potential to provide sensitive information to individuals who wish to use that information 

for harmful purposes. 

In fact, on Tuesday U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan warned 

that although biotechnology advances could help eliminate infectious diseases, it could also bring incalculable harm and be put to 

destructive use by those who seek to develop designer diseases and 

pathogens. 

This is where the Intelligence Community has to come into the 

picture. Their unique capabilities and understanding of bioterrorists and other threats can be strengthened by a better link to the 

Biosciences Community. As we heard in November, we must attract cutting edge bioscientists to the Intelligence Community and 

be able to retain their expertise on a continual basis. 

This increase will facilitate an integration of knowledge held by 

the scientific community around new potentially hazardous devel-
38

opments in biotechnology with risks defined by the Intelligence 

Community. Intelligence, for example, is needed to either confirm 

or allay our fear that new biotechnology will create a super germ, 

as well as intelligence is crucial to guiding our assessment of risk 

and identifying those specific threat agents for which we need new 

drugs or new detection systems. Finally, intelligence is needed to 

find people. 

I have said many times in this committee that the ways to harm 

Americans are infinite and the agents to do so are infinite. The 

people willing to do damage are finite. Perhaps we should spend 

more time and money looking for people rather than things. 

Our perspective today comes from the U.S. Intelligence Community, which is tasked with strengthening the relationship between 

it and the Bioscience Community. If we are to prevent future bioterrorist attacks on this country, we must develop a knowledge 

base within that community in the area of biosciences and guide 

the gathering of intelligence to evaluate it and assess its impact. 

I look forward to hearing what our witnesses have to say about 

this issue today. We may learn more about what the U.S. Government is actually doing to bridge this gap and what Congress if anything could can and should do to help. 

I recognize my friend from Rhode Island, Mr. Langevin, for an 

opening statement. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I welcome our witnesses here today and thank you for appearing before us. Today’s 

hearing, BioScience and the Intelligence Community, is a continuation of a hearing this subcommittee held in November. At that 

time members of the subcommittee were introduced to a topic that 

many of us might not have thought of before, the idea of medical 

and biological intelligence. 

Although it is not as widespread a practice as some other intelligence gathering, there are those within the Intelligence Community who are familiar with the collection and analysis of this type 

of information, and we are fortunate to have these experts here 

today to describe their activities and to help us understand how 

biointelligence capabilities might be improved. 

I know from my service on the House Armed Services Committee 

the importance the military places on medical intelligence. It is 

crucial for a battlefield commander to have a clear picture of all the 

hazards that his troops may face. Often this includes not only the 

capabilities of the enemy’s weapons, but also the local epidemiology. Commanders must know how safe the local water supply is. 

Should soldiers be aware of communicable diseases that he must 

protect them against? Does the enemy possess chemical or biological weapons capabilities? If so, what is the most effective countermeasure? 

The medical and bioscience intelligence professionals in the military can answer these questions. There are lessons that can be 

learned from the military’s approach to protect not just our military men and women, but also our civilian population as well. 

Of course, there are differences. For example, if a military commander is told that his soldiers will be operating in the area where 

anthrax is endemic among animals, such as Afghanistan, he can 

simply order his troops to be vaccinated. While I am sure that 
39

there are many useful lessons we can learn from the military, I 

also know that we cannot apply all of the systems and procedures 

directly to the civilian side. 

I am also interested to know what these similarities and differences are between bioweapons and naturally occurring diseases. 

For example, will systems used to detect and defend against bioweapons also be effective for naturally occurring diseases? 

From what I have heard, the seriousness of a potential avian flu 

pandemic is much greater within scenarios I have seen for a possible bioweapons attack. While this committee and the Department 

of Homeland Security are more focused on intentional attacks rather than natural catastrophes, we hope that we can leverage our 

practices so they will be helpful for either eventuality. 

I am convinced that infectious diseases, both intentional and naturally occurring, present one of the most serious threats that this 

Nation faces. I certainly look forward to an open and informative 

discussion today, and I want to understand the activities of the Intelligence Community in this area, and I certainly hope that we 

can figure out a way to improve our national biointelligence capabilities. 

Once again, I want to thank our witnesses for being here. I certainly look forward to your testimony. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. LINDER. Thank you. Our witnesses today bring us some information on this issue. 

Ambassador Kenneth Brill, Director, National 

Counterproliferation Center, Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Charles Allen, the Chief Intelligence Officer of the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Bruce Pease, the Director of 

Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control, for the 

Central Intelligence Agency, and Dr. Alan MacDougall, Chief, 

Counterproliferation Support Office with the Defense Intelligence 

Agency. 

I will remind each of the witnesses that your written statements 

will be part of the record without objection. We would urge you to 

summarize. 

Ambassador Brill. 

STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR KENNETH BRILL, DIRECTOR, 

NATIONAL COUNTERPROLIFERATION CENTER, OFFICE OF 

THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE 

Mr. BRILL. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and ranking 

member. I very much appreciate the invitation here today and I am 

pleased to discuss steps that the National Counterproliferation 

Center is taking to address some of the recommendations put forward on the intelligence capabilities of the United States regarding 

weapons of mass destruction on the BW topic, and thereby enhancing the ability of the Intelligence Community to meet the threat 

posed by the proliferation of biological weapons and related technologies. 

Let me begin today by underscoring what role NCPC plays on 

issues like biothreats. Expertise and analysis and collection resides 

in CIA, DIA, DHS, NSA and other elements of the Intelligence 

Community. NCPC’s role is to ensure that there is an integrated 
40

effort throughout the community against key counterproliferation 

priorities and to promote partnerships among elements of the Intelligence Community, the non-Intelligence Community, government 

agencies and experts outside of government. 

This role is critical as counterproliferation clearly requires a 

team effort, and nowhere is this more true in the area of biological 

threats to U.S. national security. Today I will discuss NCPC’s efforts to better and strengthen the IC’s work on biological threats. 

I will review steps we are taking to build partnerships within the 

U.S. Government and with biological experts outside of government 

and to discuss plans to strengthen the IC’s life sciences workforce. 

The major challenge for the IC in dealing with bio-related issues 

is research and development applications and technologies that are 

completely dual use. That is to say, legitimate research that might, 

and I emphasize might, be misused to cause harm to public health 

and homeland and national security. The IC has written numerous 

assessments so that the potential impact of existing and emerging 

technologies related to biological weapons proliferation, as these 

technologies are developed from or applied to the life sciences. 

These assessments utilized the talented in-house scientific expertise of our IC analysts and scientists, and also drew on the advice 

of outside technical experts. 

Although some believe that we will better understand the threats 

we face from the offensive use of biological agents only if we follow 

technological advances that have the potential to be misused and 

track those working in these areas. Our experience indicate that 

this is a strategy of looking for hay in a haystack. 

The key questions for the Intelligence Community are primarily 

not highly technical in nature. We must determine if a state adversary has the intent to establish, maintain, or acquire a BW program, because a country of concern typically will also have dualuse capabilities in those areas. 

Some nonstate actors such as al-Qa’ida have publicly stated they 

have the intent to have an offensive biologic capability, and the IC 

must constantly monitor the plans and capabilities of these groups 

in order both to block the acquisition of such a capability as well 

as determine their plans for using such capability as they acquire 

it. 

Focusing on technology alone will not answer these questions. I 

agree with you, sir, it can lead to speculation based on nightmare 

scenarios that are not necessarily grounded in reality. 

Another challenge facing the IC is that biological threat agents 

go beyond manmade substances. A global pandemic would have 

dramatically negative consequences for the national security interest of the United States. While such a pandemic would be largely 

dealt with by those U.S. Government agencies concerned with domestic and international public health issues, the IC would be 

looked to for actionable medical intelligence about the spread of 

pandemic diseases that would not be available publicly for one reason or another. 

The IC would also be called upon to provide analysis to support 

the efforts of U.S. Government Public Health and other agencies. 

Thus, while the IC would not be a primary actor in dealing with 
41

a pandemic situation, it needs to be prepared to play an important 

supporting role. 

The National Counterproliferation Center is working with Intelligence Community agencies to establish new partnerships and relationships with the biologic and public health communities to ensure that it is prepared to meet the various challenges of biological 

threats to the United States. 

Let me outline for you briefly now a few of the steps that we are 

taking in this regard. First, and consistent with the recommendations of the WMD Commission’s report, NCPC has established the 

position of a senior adviser for biological issues. Dr. Lawrence Kerr 

has recently assumed this position and is accompanying me today. 

Dr. Kerr has been tasked to enhance the partnership of the IC with 

non-U.S. Government sectors, which, as you have noted, both you 

and the ranking member have noted, have incredible scientific and 

technical expertise to support and improve our overall intelligence 

of biological threats. 

An important part of his partnership building efforts will be 

working with IC agencies and nongovernmental experts to establish the Intelligence Community’s first broadly focused biological 

advisory group. This group will report to the Director of National 

Intelligence through me as being established to serve the Intelligence Community as a whole. NCPC shall convene this group of 

nongovernment experts to work with the Intelligence Community 

on a regular basis, and members of this group will have security 

clearances so they can address the most challenging biological 

threat problems with which the Intelligence Community is dealing. 

NCPC has also begun an effort to improve information sharing 

within the Intelligence Community as well as with life science experts inside and outside of the U.S. Government. Our approach includes determining what types of traditional intelligence and scientific information the Intelligence Community needs to better answer questions posed by senior policymakers and how to ensure 

this information is distributed to all relevant parties within the Intelligence Community. 

We initiated this effort in early April when we co-hosted, really, 

with the National Counterterrorism Center an IC conference that 

focused on community building, information sharing and defining 

the Intelligence Community’s roles against the full spectrum of biological threats, natural to manmade. 

The conference was well attended and included approximately 85 

participants from 14 intelligence agencies, as well as senior representatives from four combatant commands. Participants in the 

conference were senior analyst, collectors and science and technology officers. 

Feedback from this conference has helped us define areas where 

biological scientists and other experts from the broader U.S. Government and outside the U.S. Government could aid in technical 

evaluations. The conference also provided insight in ways to improve our intelligence regarding biological threat agents themselves. 

In addition, we initiated an internal review of collection efforts 

associated with biological threat agents. This review, along with 

the engagement of the Intelligence Community through the con-
42

ference I mentioned previously, will result in recommendations 

that will address any gaps in our processes. The review will also 

identify ways in which we can better support customer needs for 

bio-related intelligence. 

Mr. Chairman, the ability of our biodefense community to anticipate, eliminate, prepare for and, if necessary, respond to a biological weapons attack on the United States, as you noted, depends on 

improved intelligence collection analysis and proper dissemination 

of that information to relevant customers. 

We recognize in the Intelligence Community that numerous, nonIC partners must be more fully engaged in these processes in order 

to improve biodefense infrastructure. We are working closely with 

all U.S. Government organizations involved in the biodefense mission to ensure our biodefense customers are part of the requirement-setting process, that they are fully aware of the IC’s capabilities and limitations and that they are recipients of the intelligence 

analyses they need to perform their part of the biodefense mission. 

In this regard, in July, we will cosponsor with the Department 

of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center, 

a second biothreats conference that will include all relevant USG 

agencies, not just Intelligence Community agencies, to expand 

awareness, address common concerns and identify ways to share 

information that is mutually beneficial. If this forum is anything 

like the first one, it will stimulate discussion on issues regarding 

the biological information most valued and already possessed within the U.S. Government and will identify gaps in our current systems of collection and analysis. Our goal will be ensuring these 

gaps are closed through a strategic planning and implementation 

of those plans across the Federal Government. 

Following this conference, in the fall, NCPC, again with the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism 

Center, will co-host a third conference involving representatives of 

the U.S. Government as well as representatives from academia and 

the private sector to explore how these sectors outside of government might help fill information gaps. 

We are already engaging leading experts in certain designated 

fields who can add technical insight into current and emerging biological threats, and we continue to seek their counsel on how to 

most productively engage non-U.S. life scientists in that larger 

community. 

Mr. Chairman, the National Counterproliferation Center is in the 

final stages of preparing a strategic counterproliferation plan with 

the Intelligence Community. This plan will, among other things, 

identify enhancements of the Intelligence Community’s counter-BW 

capabilities as a priority goal and will stress the need for the Intelligence Community to fully integrate and coordinate the efforts it 

has under way against the BW threat. 

It also acknowledges that the Intelligence Community’s success 

in dealing with biothreat challenges is dependent upon having the 

skilled workforce needed to deal with these complex issues. The 

plan will promote the recruitment, the development and retention 

of the highly skilled and specialized workforce needed to sustain 

success in acquiring and using high value intelligence information 
43

against each of the WMD threats we face, but particularly the BW 

target. 

Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, we in the Intelligence Community 

recognize that we need to continue to integrate and focus our efforts internally, to actively seek partnerships externally and to attract and retain skilled life scientists into our workforce, if we are 

to be successful in dealing with the challenges to our national biothreat security. 

We know what we have to do in this regard, and have made a 

good start in achieving these goals in all of these areas. 

[The statement of Mr. Brill follows:]

FOR THE RECORD 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR KEN BRILL

THURSDAY, MAY 4, 2006

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and distinguished Subcommittee members, I am 

pleased to appear before you today to discuss the steps the National 

Counterproliferation Center (NCPC) is taking to address some of the recommendations put forward by The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United 

States regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) on the biological warfare 

(BW) topic, thereby enhancing the ability of the Intelligence Community (IC) to 

meet the threat posed by the proliferation of biological weapons and related technologies. 

Let me begin by underscoring what role NCPC plays on issues like bio threats. 

Expertise in analysis and collection resides in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 

the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Department of Homeland Security 

(DHS), the National Security Agency (NSA), and other elements of the Intelligence 

Community. NCPC’s role is to ensure there is an integrated IC effort against key 

priorities and to promote partnerships among the elements of the IC, non-IC United 

States (U.S.) government (USG) agencies, and experts outside of government. 

NCPC’s priority-setting and integrating role is critical, as counterproliferation requires a team effort, and nowhere is this more true than in the area of biological 

threats to U.S. national security. 

Today, I will discuss efforts to strengthen the IC’s life sciences work force, the creation of a biological science advisory group that NCPC’s Senior Bio Advisor will establish and run, and our initiatives to make more effective links between biological 

experts throughout government and outside the government with the IC. In addition, I would like to take some time to tell you about a few other initiatives NCPC 

has underway to promote an integrated IC approach to the problem of biological 

threat agents, increase teamwork, and fill gaps in our knowledge about the biological threats posed from state and non-state actors.

The Challenges Facing Bio Threat Intelligence 

A major challenge for the Intelligence Community in dealing with bio-related 

issues is research and development applications and technology that are completely 

dual-use—i.e., legitimate research that might (and I emphasize ‘might’) be misused 

to cause harm to public health and homeland and national security. The IC has 

written numerous assessments of the potential impact of existing and emerging 

technologies related to biological weapons proliferation as these technologies are developed from or applied to the life sciences; a major portion of the 2004 National 

Intelligence Estimate on worldwide BW programs was devoted to this issue. These 

assessments have utilized the talented in-house scientific expertise of our analysts 

and scientists and have drawn on the advice of outside technical experts as well. 

Although some believe that we will understand the threats we face from offensive 

use of biological agents if only we follow technological advances that have the potential to be misused and track who in the world is working in these areas, our experience indicates that this is a strategy of looking for hay in a haystack. The key questions for the Intelligence Community are primarily not highly technical in nature. 

• We must determine if a state adversary has the intent to establish, maintain, 

or acquire a BW program, because a country of concern typically will have a 

dual-use capability. Whether that capability is for legitimate medical purposes, 

developing defensive countermeasures, or is for offensive BW is closely guarded, 

non-technical information. 
44

• Some non-state actors, such as al-Qa’ida, have publicly stated that they have 

the intent to eventually have an offensive biological capability, so the IC must 

constantly monitor the plans and capabilities of these groups in order to determine who, where, and under what circumstances they will actually use them. 

Focusing on technology alone not only does not answer these questions, but it can 

lead people to speculate on nightmare scenarios that are not grounded in reality. 

Another challenge facing the IC is that biological threat agents go beyond manmade substances produced by state programs or terrorist groups. A global pandemic 

would have dramatically negative consequences for the national security interests 

of the United States. While such a pandemic would be largely dealt with by those 

US government agencies concerned with domestic and international public health 

issues, the Intelligence Community would be looked to for actionable medical intelligence about the spread of pandemic diseases that would not be available publicly 

or that others might cover up for one reason or another. The IC would also be called 

upon to provide analysis to support the efforts of U.S. government public health and 

other agencies. Thus, while the IC would not be a primary actor in dealing with 

a pandemic situation it needs to be prepared to play an important supporting role.

Expanding Partnerships and Collaboration 

NCPC is working with IC agencies to ensure the IC is prepared to succeed in 

meeting the various bio threat challenges to U.S. national security. In this regard, 

NCPC works to establish important new partnerships and relationships with the life 

science and public health communities. The following are some of the steps we are 

taking. 

First, and consistent with the recommendations of the WMD Commission’s Report, NCPC has established the position of Senior Advisor for Biological Issues. Dr. 

Lawrence Kerr has recently assumed this position and is accompanying me today. 

Dr. Kerr completed his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Vanderbilt University and undertook his postdoctoral work at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San 

Diego, California. Dr. Kerr has a wealth of expertise pertinent to the mission of the 

Senior Advisor. He ran a basic science laboratory devoted to the regulation of gene 

expression as faculty at Vanderbilt School of Medicine and now Georgetown School 

of Medicine. His political experience has taken him from developing policy and staffing senior officials of the White House (within the Office of Science and Technology 

Policy and most recently, as Director for Biodefense Policy within the Homeland Security Council) to the Congress (as a fellow on the Health subunit of the Senate Judiciary Committee). He remains actively engaged with the life science and public 

health communities writ large. His experience in fostering policy to meet national 

objectives has brought him the respect of the Federal Departments and Agencies, 

and individuals and groups from the private sector and academic communities with 

whom he routinely lectures at the national and international levels and works to 

coordinate policy and plans. 

Dr. Kerr is tasked with promoting greater collaboration among the interagency, 

academic and private sector to improve intelligence related to biological threats. As 

part of this effort, Dr. Kerr is working to identify new partnerships that should be 

developed with entities outside the IC and outside the U.S. Government, to 

strengthen the IC’s counter-BW capabilities. 

An important part of Dr. Kerr’s partnership building efforts will be working with 

IC agencies and non-governmental experts to establish the IC’s first broadly-focused 

biological science advisory group. This group will report to the DNI through the Director of NCPC, but it will serve the IC as a whole. While the classified charter for 

this group is under review, we envision a panel of nationally recognized leaders in 

the life sciences, engineering, public health and medicine, veterinary medicine, 

pharmaceutical experts and many other disciplines. NCPC shall convene this group 

of non-government experts to work with the Intelligence Community on a routine 

basis. 

This advisory group will draw from the best practices of existing IC advisory panels, which will require that the life scientists and associated experts possess security 

clearances, permitting their exposure to and understanding of our nation’s current 

capabilities in collection, analysis, and the science and technology brought to bear 

in performing these missions. The group will complement, not duplicate, the work 

of the Defense Science Board (DSB), the Intelligence Science Board, the National 

Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity (NSABB), or the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Jefferson Project and Biochem 2020 group. The new advisory group we will look 

across the broad horizon of known and emerging biological threat agents challenges 

for U.S. intelligence, ranging from man-made substance and state and terrorist programs to naturally occurring pandemics, and thereby support the fundamental mission of the NCPC, fulfill the commitments in the President’s Homeland Security and 
45

National Security Presidential Directives (HSPD–10/NSPD–33, ‘‘Biodefense for the 

21st Century) and build on recommendations from the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) 

recent report and the advise of renowned leaders in the field. 

We envision the new bio advisory panel will include a permanent advisory group 

of leading experts with access to a network of cleared scientists who are able to tap 

into the scientific and technical experts across the life sciences. We will encourage 

this group to partner with the existing life science-related committees in and out 

of the Federal government in order to prevent redundancy and augment on-going 

projects. NCPC, with input from the IC, will ask the advisory group to identify issue 

areas and cutting-edge technologies that might pose a future threat to our security.

Enhancing Collaboration through Information Sharing 

NCPC has also begun an effort to improve information sharing within the IC as 

well as with life science experts inside and outside of the USG who can extend the 

breadth and depth of scientific understanding brought to bear on the issue of biological threat agents. The approach includes determining what types of traditional 

intelligence and scientifically grounded information the IC needs to better answer 

the questions posed by senior policymakers and how to ensure it is distributed to 

all relevant parties within the IC. We envision that existing working groups and 

policy coordinating committees will be asked to work on strategies to resolve key 

issues that are identified during this process. 

We initiated this effort in early April when we co-hosted with the National 

Counterterrorism center (NCTC) an IC conference that focused on community building, information sharing, and defining the Intelligence Community’s roles against 

the full spectrum of biological threats, natural to intentional. The conference was 

well attended, with approximately 85 participants from 14 intelligence agencies (including senior representatives from 4 combatant commands). Participants in the 

conference were senior analysts, collectors, and science and technology officers. Each 

organization briefed its mission, goals, and needs. Participants told us these briefings provided valuable insights into the array of bio-related activities ongoing in the 

IC. In addition, we conducted smaller-group discussions on specific issues, including 

improving information sharing both within and outside the IC, and defining the IC’s 

role in covering natural disease outbreaks. Feedback from this IC conference has 

helped us define areas where biological scientists and other experts from the broader USG and outside of government could aid in technical evaluations and has given 

us insight in ways to improve our intelligence regarding biological threat agents. 

In addition, we initiated an internal review of collection efforts associated with 

biological threat agents. This review, along with the engagement of the IC writ large 

through the aforementioned conference, will result in recommendations that will address any gaps in our current processes as well as identify ways in which we can 

better support our IC customer’s need for bio-related intelligence. 

The ability of our biodefense community to anticipate, eliminate, prepare for, and 

if necessary, respond to a biological weapons attack on the United States depends 

on improved intelligence collection, analysis and proper dissemination of that information to the relevant customers. We recognize that numerous non-IC partners 

must be more fully engaged in these processes for an improved seamless biodefense 

infrastructure. We are partnering closely with all U.S. government (USG) organizations involved in the biodefense mission, such as the Departments of Health and 

Human Services (HHS), Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Defense, the 

US Department of Agriculture, and others to make sure that all of our customers 

not only are part of the requirements setting process, but that they are fully aware 

of our capabilities and limitations—and are recipients of the intelligence analyses 

they need in order to perform their part of the biodefense mission. 

In July we will co-sponsor, with NCTC and DHS, a second bio threats conference 

to expand awareness, address common concerns and identify ways to share information that is mutually beneficial to the Departments while maintaining their respective mission areas. We will discuss how to better identify, acquire, distribute, integrate, and utilize diverse streams of information within the US government so the 

threats posed by known and emerging biological agents are more effectively identified, characterized and addressed. If this forum is anything like the first one, it will 

surely stimulate discussion on issues regarding the biological information most valued and already possessed within the U.S. government and will identify gaps in our 

current systems of collection and analysis. Our goal will be to ensure that these 

gaps are closed through strategic planning and implementation of those plans across 

the Federal government. 

In the fall, NCPC will co-host with NCTC and DHS a third conference involving 

key representatives from academia and the private sector to explore how these sectors might help fill our information gaps. We are already engaging leading experts 
46

in certain designated fields who can add technical insight into current and emerging 

biological threats and we are seeking their counsel on how to most productively engage non-USG life scientists.

Building and Sustaining the Workforce Needed to Meet Bio Threat Challenges 

NCPC is in the final stages of preparing a strategic counterproliferation plan for 

the IC. This plan will, inter alia, identify enhancement of the IC’s counter-BW capabilities as a priority goal and will stress the need for the IC to fully integrate and 

coordinate the efforts it has underway against the BW threat. It will also acknowledge the IC’s success in dealing with bio threat challenges is dependent upon having 

the skilled workforce needed to deal with these complex issues. The plan will promote the recruitment, development, and retention of a highly skilled and specialized 

workforce needed to sustain success in acquiring and using high value intelligence 

information against each of the specific WMD threats, including the BW target. The 

key initiatives will include, inter alia: 

• Recruitment—in partnership between the Communities, a workforce mapping 

and assessment initiative will establish the current baseline; identify any expertise shortages or gaps; and then will work to develop an interagency process to 

promote candidate sharing and make recommendations for agency recruitment. 

• Career Development—an initiative to identify career benchmarks for life 

science professionals across the Community; review training and improve communications and access to strengthen external linkages with experts; and will 

work to find new ways to increase the numbers of analysts, collectors and other 

life science and technology experts. 

• Retention—we are reviewing agency retention strategies; communicating best 

practices; and working to establish a Community Rewards Program recognizing 

collaborative achievement. 

• And finally, partnership is the key—partnering with the Office of the Director 

of National Intelligence (ODNI) and other Community members to leverage the 

best talent and expertise within the private sector.

Conclusion 

Bio threats are among the most complex challenges facing the IC. The biological 

sciences are producing new findings and innovations at a remarkable pace. These 

innovations hold the promise to advance human health, but those also have the potential to be misused by state weapons programs or terrorists. At the same time, 

the possibility of naturally occurring pandemics is increasing. We recognize that significant challenges remain for the collection of traditional intelligence and other 

kinds of information to assist in attack warning, countermeasure development and 

strategic level policy-making related to biothreats to the U.S. NCPC is working with 

IC agencies to integrate the IC’s work on bio threat challenges. In addition, NCPC 

is leading an effort to build partnerships for the IC with non-IC U.S. government 

agencies, as well as with the non-government life science communities. Finally, 

NCPC is also working with the IC agencies to ensure the IC has the workforce it 

needs in the future to deal successfully with bio threat challenges. We have much 

to do to realize our goals, but we have made a good start toward achieving our goals 

in all these areas.

Mr. LINDER. Thank you, Ambassador Brill. 

Mr. ALLEN. 

STATEMENT OF CHARLES E. ALLEN, CHIEF INTELLIGENCE 

OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. ALLEN. Chairman Linder, Ranking Member Langevin, Congressman Norton, thank you very much for inviting me here to discuss a very important topic for the Department of Homeland Security intelligence and for the rest of the Intelligence Community. 

The consequences of a high impact bioterrorist attack upon the 

homeland could be catastrophic, rivaling the casualties and the economic damage caused by the detonation of a nuclear weapon in a 

major city. 

Because the potential consequences of bioterrorism are so great 

and the knowledge and materials for biological weapons development are likely to become more available in the future, the Depart-
47

ment of Homeland Security ranks the biological threat as among 

its highest concerns. 

In this statement, I will first describe the bioterrorism threat we 

currently face as well as the prospects for terrorist-developed advanced biological agents. I will then describe efforts Department of 

Homeland Security intelligence is taking to make unique contributions to existing Intelligence Community efforts to combat bioterrorism. 

The threat of bioterrorism is real. We know that al-Qa’ida since 

the late 1990s has sought biological weapons and progressed to the 

point of constructing a biological production facility in Qandahar, 

Afghanistan, before U.S. military action in 2001 brought down the 

Taliban regime which had protected al-Qa’ida. Although al-Qa’ida’s 

BW efforts have been disrupted, we judge its intent to pursue biological weapons continues. 

In addition to al-Qa’ida, I am concerned with like-minded extremist groups and lone wolves, both foreign and domestic, who 

could develop biologic weapons. The technology and knowledge that 

produced simple yet effective biological agents is readily available 

in the United States and overseas. 

With the increase in radicalization worldwide, it is conceivable 

that some converts will have knowledge of the biosciences or engineering and will use their skills to present bioterrorism. 

I understand the subcommittee is particularly concerned with 

the impact of biotechnology on the development of novel and engineered biological threats, those that are designed to evade our medical countermeasures and detection systems. In this area, we must 

exercise caution and not confuse the capabilities of terrorists with 

state level biological warfare programs. 

There is no doubt that the knowledge and technologies today 

exist to create and manipulate agents. However, the capabilities of 

terrorists to embark on this path in the near to midterm is judged 

to be low. Just because technology is available does not mean terrorists can or will use it. 

In general, we see terrorists in the early stages of biological capabilities, and we do not anticipate a rapid evolution to include sophisticated methods that will enable the creation of new organisms 

or genetic modification to enhance virulence. 

That being said, we must not mistake unsophisticated weapons 

for those that are ineffective. Even crude biological preparations 

can cause significant health and economic damage if well disseminated. 

The Department of Homeland Security intelligence is working 

closely with the Bioscience Community and our Intelligence Community partners to make unique contributions to ongoing counterbioterrorism work. Our role is to analyze potential, domestic and 

international biologic threats and to ensure that the homeland perspective is represented in threat analysis and collection. 

We also augment and enhance bioterrorism-related programs 

and activities that benefit the homeland mission. To this end, my 

Office of Intelligence and Analysis, has established a dedicated biothreat section in our Threat Analysis Division. The officers in this 

section provide intelligence support on bioterrorism and naturally 

occurring biological threats such as influenza to our DHS compo-
48

nents, Intelligence Community colleagues and to our Federal, 

State, local, tribal and international partners. 

The Office of Intelligence and Analysis leverages 24 by 7 the 

technical reachback to the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security Science 

and Technology Directorate. We also partnered with the Science 

and Technology Directorate on the first national bioterrorism risk 

assessment, which connotatively evaluates 28 biothreat agents 

based on threat, vulnerability and consequence. 

The Office of Intelligence and Analysis last year established a biological advisory panel of bioscience experts from academia and industry. This panel assisted the Department of Homeland Security 

with forecasting trends in biology that could manifest as homeland 

threats in the next 5 years. We will continue to work with these 

and other experts on the biological threat. 

The Department of Homeland Security intelligence officers collaborate with the National Counterterrorism Center and the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the State and local level in providing first responders with WMD threat briefings and in providing 

indicators and warning so officials in the field know how to identify 

and report potential bioterrorist activities. 

Before I conclude, I would like to emphasize the crucial importance of collection in our intelligence efforts to combat bioterrorism. 

As the WMD Commission last year identified, the Intelligence 

Community has significant intelligence gaps with respect to bioterrorism and biological weapons. Any effort to enhance biointelligence must focus on targeting and collection first. 

Without current specific information, any analysis is merely an 

educated guess. While integrating scientists, physicians and other 

specialists into intelligence analysis has merit, and we have such 

personnel in the Office of Intelligence and analysis and obviously 

across the Intelligence Community, it alone is not the solution to 

biointelligence. We simply must have more collection. 

Thank you again for inviting me here today. You have my commitment that the Department of Homeland Security intelligence 

will continue to partner with our Science and Technology Directorate, the Department of Homeland Security components and the 

Intelligence Community at large to target, collect and analyze information on foreign and domestic biological threats. 

[The statement of Mr. Allen follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHARLES E. ALLEN

THURSDAY, MAY 4, 2006 

Introduction 

Chairman Linder, Ranking Member Langevin, Members of the Subcommittee: 

Thank you for inviting me here today to discuss a very important topic for the DHS 

Intelligence Enterprise and for the rest of our Intelligence Community. 

The consequences of a high-impact bioterrorist attack upon the Homeland could 

be catastrophic, rivaling the casualties and economic damage caused by the detonation of a nuclear device in a major city. Because the potential consequences of bioterrorism are so great, and the knowledge and materials for biological weapons 

(BW) development are likely to become more available in the future, the Department of Homeland Security ranks the BW threat among its highest concerns. 

In this statement, I will first describe the BW terrorist threat we currently face 

as well as the prospects for terrorist-developed advanced BW, followed by a brief 

discussion of the importance of collection to BW intelligence. I also will describe ef-
49

1 It is important that we do not confuse sophistication with effectiveness. Even a crude biological weapon can cause significant casualties and economic impacts. 

forts DHS Intelligence is taking with the Intelligence Community to combat bioterrorism.

Defining the Bioterrorist Threat 

We know that al-Qa’ida in the late 1990s began developing a biological weapons 

program and constructed a ‘‘low-tech’’ facility in Qandahar, Afghanistan, for BW 

production before US military forces disrupted this activity. Even though subsequent US intelligence and military operations in the region have further damaged 

al-Qa’ida’s leadership and operational capabilities, we believe al-Qa’ida’s intent to 

develop biological weapons likely continues. 

We know that domestic actors involved in acts of bioterrorism over the past 20 

years have exhibited increasingly lethal objectives. A review of more than 120 cases 

of domestic bioterrorism and biocrimes reveals that more than two-thirds of these 

perpetrators were motivated by political or ideological goals—the same motivations 

that drive many terrorists. Although the object of these attacks were individuals or 

small groups, extremist ideology has been the genesis for mass casualty terrorism 

and the potential exists for this type of small-scale actor to scale-up their efforts 

and pose a more significant problem. 

Perhaps the most difficult target—and potentially the most significant and likely 

to succeed on some scale—is the ‘‘lone wolf.’’ An individual with training in the biosciences and operating alone could use small-scale production to yield an effective 

biological weapon. One does not need a significant infrastructure or multiple personnel to produce an effective biological weapon and this activity could go on undetected in the Homeland. We are especially concerned that small, loosely affiliated 

cells or individuals within the United States could conduct biological attacks. Such 

groups or individuals may not be affiliated with al-Qa’ida but merely subscribe to 

its ideology, similar to the small cell that conducted the July 2005 suicide bombings 

in London. 

I understand that the Subcommittee is particularly concerned with the impact of 

biotechnology on development of novel and engineered biological threats—those designed to evade our medical countermeasures or detection systems. In this area we 

must exercise caution and not confuse the capabilities of bioterrorists with statelevel BW programs. There is no doubt that the knowledge and technologies today 

exist to create and manipulate bio-threat agents; however, the capability of terrorists to embark on this path in the near—to mid-term is judged to be low. Just because the technology is available does not mean terrorists can or will use it. 

It is vital that we keep in mind that all the equipment and knowledge to create 

highly-effective biological weapons is openly available today and can be remarkably 

low-technology. In general, terrorist capabilities in the area of bioterrorism are 

crude and relatively unsophisticated, and we do not see any indication of a rapid 

evolution of capability.1 It is, therefore, unclear how advancements in high-end biotechnology will impact the future threat of bioterrorism, if at all. All it would take, 

however, for advanced BW development is one skilled scientist and modest equipment—an activity we are unlikely to detect in advance. 

With respect to the evolution of bioterrorism, we would expect to see use of traditional biological agents (anthrax, plague, tularemia, and others) before the appearance of advanced BW agents. Therefore, we would consider the use of traditional 

biological weapons more frequently or on a large scale to be a trigger that may indicate movement towards more advanced biological weapons. 

For all we know about the bioterrorist threat today, I am more concerned with 

what we do not know. As the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the 

United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) last year identified, 

there are significant gaps and obstacles to our current knowledge of BW capabilities 

and even more so with respect to specific plans, methods, and targets.

Developing Bio-Intelligence 

Targeting and Collection are Critical Components 

The Intelligence Community has significant intelligence gaps with respect to bioterrorism and biological weapons and any effort to enhance bio-intelligence must

focus on targeting and collection first. Without current, specific information, any 

analysis is merely an educated guess. Human intelligence is absolutely essential for 

identifying plans, intentions, and targets of bioterrorists domestically and overseas. 

Analysis of how the Intelligence Community handled the former Soviet Union’s BW 

program, the Iraqi BW program, and al-Qa’ida’s BW efforts clearly demonstrate that 

human source reporting is vital; signals, imagery, and measurement and signatures 
50

intelligence can only take one so far—plans and intentions are revealed through insider information. 

While integrating scientists, physicians, and other specialists into intelligence 

analysis has merit—and we have such personnel in the Office of Intelligence and 

Analysis and across the Intelligence Community—it alone is not the solution to biointelligence. Our difficulties do not come from analyzing scientific information, but 

in obtaining credible, relevant information to analyze. To this end, the IC should 

look to more than just relying on scientific and technical specialists only for analysis, it should also partner with science and academia to contribute to the targeting 

and collection of information on the bioterrorist threat. This does not mean training 

physicians as spies, but there is a great amount of overt, public, or semi-public information that medical and scientific personnel come across that is of value to us.

Targeting: Materials or People? 

Past targeting of BW activity has focused on dual-use equipment. This was somewhat possible when tracking large-scale state BW efforts, but it will be increasingly 

difficult to track, forecast, and control such materials and knowledge, especially on 

the smaller scale of bioterrorism. The equipment that terrorists would need has a 

multitude of legitimate uses as that can be found in a variety of legitimate entities 

worldwide. While tracking potential bioterrorism materials will remain important, 

we may be better off focusing primarily on tracking persons with the motivation, 

intent, and capability to become bioterrorists. 

We need to focus our intelligence efforts on developing better intelligence about 

the plans and intentions of those who would carry out an attack. Toward this end, 

my Office of Intelligence and Analysis is managing an effort to fuse all-source intelligence, including open source, to identify individuals with technical training and 

credentials who interact with foreign persons of concern. The interaction of these 

individuals can give early indications of intent to develop biological weapons and 

other WMD for use against the Homeland. These indications, when identified, serve 

to focus collection and monitoring through intelligence means in order to characterize and assess potential developing threats. 

There are specific legitimate entities which could be major sources of information 

about individuals or groups who may be seeking to develop expertise in new technologies for malicious purposes, yet there is no effective process for collecting and 

analyzing this information. DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis is investigating 

how we may partner with these entities to keep informed on developments and suspicious activity.

Bioterrorism Intelligence within DHS Intelligence 

Within the Office of Intelligence and Analysis’ Threat Analysis Division, we have 

established a dedicated section for Bio-Threats with the mission to conduct allsource intelligence analysis on both bioterrorism and naturally-occurring biological 

threats, such as avian influenza. This section also seeks to identify new bio-threat 

information through programs with US Government partners, and it performs outreach and liaison with DHS components, Intelligence Community partners, nonTitle 50 agencies, and State and local partners. 

Our Bio-Threat Section is staffed with four officers—two of whom are PhD-level 

experts—and we have two vacancies for which we are recruiting. In addition to our 

in-house staff, we have a reachback capability to subject-matter experts at several 

Department of Energy National Laboratories. Although most bioterrorism issues are 

dealt with in-house, it is essential that we have 24/7 reachback for technical information such as agent production methods, dissemination device efficiency, and 

agent virulence data that we then apply to our analyses and finished intelligence 

products.

Collaboration 

DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis does not conduct its analysis and production alone; we are well-integrated with the key BW analysis and operational elements of each Intelligence Community member as well as with the science and technology centers within the Federal government. We have no stronger partner in the 

bioterrorism field than the National Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC) Chemical, 

Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) Terrorism Division. On an almost 

daily basis, we confer with our NCTC colleagues on BW issues as well as other 

WMD topics. We also have close relationships with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) WMD Countermeasure Unit, the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) 

Counterterrorist Center (CTC) and its Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC), and the Defense Intelligence Agency 

(DIA). 
51

In addition, we work closely with the DHS National Biodefense Analysis and 

Countermeasures Center (NBACC). The NBACC has provided us with technical information on bio-threats and, in return, we supply the NBACC with relevant intelligence reports and assessments relating to biological weapons threats. The Office 

of Intelligence and Analysis last year partnered with the NBACC to produce the 

first Bioterrorism Risk Assessment under Homeland Security Presidential Directive 

10 (Biodefense for the 21st Century). 

Beyond the Federal government, our Bio-Threat Section has made in-roads to academia and industry. In 2005 we sponsored two well-received workshops to explore 

current issues in bioterrorism by hosting national experts from outside government. 

There were: 

• ‘‘Emerging Technologies: Assessing the Future Bioterror Threat’’ brought together a panel of leading biotechnology and biological weapons experts to discuss their projections for the bioterror threat to the United States over the next 

five years. This panel was created as part of a broader DHS effort to establish 

relationships with key experts in biological fields. 

‘‘Terrorism and Chemical, Biological, and Radiological (CBR) Weapons: Outlook, 

Intent, and Constraints’’ involved terrorism experts discussing the factors that 

shape terrorist interest in, and potential use of CBR agents. Key topics discussed include, how recent changes in the nature of Islamic terrorism might affect terrorists’ intent to acquire or use CBR agents, how terrorists would measure ‘‘success’’ for CBR agent use, and the psychological, social, and operational 

factors that might affect terrorists’ attitudes towards CBR agents. 

The Office of Intelligence and Analysis also is developing relationships with our 

close allies in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. For the past two years, 

we have shared WMD terrorism information and technical studies with the United 

Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. This year we will provide the intelligence and 

threat scene setter for the Consequence Management Group—a US, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia working group that shares WMD preparedness and response best practices and policies based on the worldwide WMD threat. 

We also engage in bilateral relationships to discuss bioterrorist threats. The Office 

of Intelligence and Analysis recently sent an officer to engage the Russian Government on bioterrorism information sharing, law enforcement cooperation, and a joint 

US-Russia bioterrorism exercise. We will continue to form international partnerships to tackle the threat of bioterrorism as it is impossible for one agency or one 

government to cover adequately such a diverse and rapidly advancing field.

Examples of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis’ Work in the Area of Bioterrorism 

The Office of Intelligence and Analysis has been productive in its bioterrorism 

analysis and program development. Although some of our efforts are classified and 

cannot be discussed in this forum, we have been engaged in a number of endeavors, 

such as those listed below: 

• The Office of Intelligence and Analysis founded and chairs the Bio-Threat 

Intelligence Support Working Group (BTISWG) in partnership with the 

NBACC in order to provide Intelligence Community-wide intelligence expertise 

on BW issues. The BTISWG is chaired by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis 

and vice-chaired by NCTC and includes 12 senior BW officers from CIA, DIA, 

FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA), and other Intelligence Community 

members. 

• Through the BTISWG, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis contributed intelligence information to the first Bioterrorism Risk Assessment called for by 

HSPD–10. This risk assessment serves as the first quantitative, comprehensive 

analysis of threat, vulnerability, and consequences of each of 28 bio-threat 

agents.. 

• The Office of Intelligence and Analysis, in partnership with NCTC and FBI, 

has conducted dozens of WMD terrorism threat briefings to state and local 

officials in order to provide them with awareness of the threat and to provide 

indicators and warning information so they may appropriately report any suspicious events. 

• The Office of Intelligence and Analysis is co-sponsoring with the National 

Counterproliferation Center, the NBACC, and the Department of Health and 

Human Services a Bio-Threat Information Sharing Conference series to 

match US Government and non-US Government threat-related information to 

customers in Intelligence Community. We already have had an Intelligence 

Community-only meeting and plan to have a federal government-wide meeting 

this summer with similar events for the private sector and state governments 

in the fall. 
52

• We are the integrator and supplier of threat and intelligence information to 

the National Biosurveillance Group—an interagency body that analyzes environmental and health data to provide early warning of a natural or deliberate 

biological event. 

• The Office of Intelligence and Analysis supports development of BioShield 

Material Threat Assessments and Determinations by ensuring that the 

baseline threat information and adversary capabilities are accurate.

Conclusion 

The Office of Intelligence and Analysis will continue to partner with DHS’ Science 

and Technology Directorate and our DHS components to focus strongly on targeting, 

collecting, and analyzing information on foreign and domestic bioterrorist threats. 

To maintain close contact with the scientific community, we will continue our workshop series with academia and industry. We also plan to have a satellite Office of 

Intelligence and Analysis office within NBACC at the Interagency Biodefense Campus at Fort Detrick to ensure that we have direct access to what will be the hub 

of US biodefense work. My Office also is reviewing several initiatives to enable the 

DHS intelligence enterprise to function more cohesively against the bioterrorist and 

WMD threat and to leverage our state and federal partners to develop tactical intelligence while maintaining our strategic support to the science and technology communities.

Mr. LINDER. Thank you, Mr. Allen. 

Mr. PEASE. 

STATEMENT OF BRUCE PEASE, DIRECTOR, WEAPONS 

INTELLIGENCE, NONPROLIFERATION AND ARMS CONTROL, 

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY 

Mr. PEASE. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Langevin, Congresswoman Norton. Good afternoon. 

Let me start by endorsing the comments you just heard by Mr. 

Allen and Ambassador Brill. I will amplify this a bit and try to 

summarize, but focusing on the role that bioscience plays in our biological warfare analytic efforts. 

Let me start by emphasizing that outreach is an effort we take 

very, very seriously and have focused considerable time and energy 

to strengthen over the past few years. I realize that probably few 

of the outside experts who have spoken to you fully understand our 

capabilities, our intelligence capabilities, the nature and scope of 

our job, or the extent of our efforts to continually improve our expertise. 

Let me begin by explaining why we value their expertise so highly. We have a broad mission in WINPAC, the office that I direct 

at CIA, to do all we can to protect America from the strategic 

threat of foreign weapons that you have already mentioned. 

We are concerned about the states that may develop or enhance 

their biological warfare capabilities, and we are concerned about 

the nexus between biological warfare and terrorism. The rapid 

emergence of new technologies is something that we are very seized 

with and we do try to keep our eye on the cutting edge of biological 

science that could be applied to biological warfare. 

Clearly the scientific expertise that we can talk to and has made 

itself very available to us, experts across America are very willing 

to help us, offer us material, insights, and approaches that jumpstart some of our thinking, and help, frankly, spur our thinking in 

areas that are very beneficial. 

We also are trying hard to bring experts into our own workforce 

and our recruiting is very much aimed at that. We have in our 

workforce world class biological warfare experts, some at the doc-
53

toral level, some the at the master’s level, some at the bachelor’s 

level, that are trained intelligence professionals applying their 

skills to biological warfare. 

But this expertise together, attached to the biological and biotechnological experts that we can talk to from the outside, help us 

focus on all aspects of the development of the biological warfare 

threat. No matter how many people we put together in a room, 

there is an extra person who is willing to offer their services and 

worth hearing from. We try to do that. 

Having said that, I will repeat, I think, something that you 

heard from both Mr. Allen and Ambassador Brill, which is this is 

not the hard part of the biological warfare threat and keeping 

ahead of the biological warfare threat, especially when you are 

talking about that threat in the hands of terrorists. The hard part 

is getting the information on where that threat is actually being 

developed, what they are developing, how they are doing it, and 

what they intend to do with it. 

That is one of the hardest collection intelligence targets that 

there is in the world. I have in my career spanned many intelligence collection targets and intelligence priorities. This is the 

hardest of the hard. The work that needs to be done there, as Mr. 

Allen says, needs to be both relentless and creative. Outside experts can help us on both the collection front and the analytic 

front. 

Let me stop it there and turn it over to my colleague, Dr. 

MacDougall. 

[The statement of Mr. Pease follows:]

PREAPRED STATEMENT OF BRUCE PEASE

THURSDAY, MAY 4, 2006

Chairman Linder, Ranking Member Langevin, Members of the Subcommittee: 

Good afternoon (morning). Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today 

about issues we consider critical to our ability to combat the threat posed by biological weapons. Specifically, I would like to address the role that bioscience plays in 

our biological warfare (BW) analytic efforts, and describe for you how we have 

reached out to biological experts and resources beyond and Intelligence Community. 

I should emphasize that outreach is an effort we take very seriously and have focused considerable time and energy to strengthen over the past few years. I also 

realize that probably few of the outside experts who have spoken to you fully understand our capabilities, the nature and scope of our job, or the extent of our efforts 

to continually improve our technical expertise. 

Let me begin by explaining why we value biological expertise so highly. 

We have a broad mission to do all we can to protect America from the strategic 

threat of foreign weapons, including biological weapons. We are concerned about 

States that may continue to develop or enhance their biological warfare capabilities, 

and we have assigned a high priority to looking for a possible nexus between biological warfare and terrorism. 

• The rapid emergence and spread of new technologies—most of which have legitimate applications in biology and medicine—may accelerate the rate of BW 

agent development; we worry about the possibility that this will lead to future 

biothreats that may be even harder to detect and thwart. 

Clearly scientific expertise must go hand-in-hand with analytical expertise in assessing current and future biological warfare threats. For example, to analyze the 

threat posed by foreign offensive programs, we must have the technical know-how 

to evaluate all aspects of the BW cycle—from research and development through 

agent production, characterization, formulation, weaponization, testing, and dissemination. 

• Strong bioscience skills are needed to understand, among other things, the 

mechanism by which a given biological agent causes disease, how genetically al-
54

tering an agent might change its structure or function, the feasibility of combining different in a single weapon, possible scenarios for using specific BW 

agents, the behavior of various agents under adverse environmental conditions, 

delivery options, routes of exposure, prevention and treatment options, and the 

clinical effects in exposed victims. 

The information we receive from our collectors, more often than not, is not highly 

technical. However, we often are faced with technical, BW-related questions, and for 

those we rely on in-house expertise as well as outside bioscience experts. 

How exactly do we do this? 

We have implemented a two-pronged strategy to ensure that we develop 

and maintain a critical core of bioscience expertise. 

1. The first part of our strategy is the expansion and strengthening of our analytic workforce by recruiting and hiring the best and the brightest candidates 

with strong technical credentials, and providing them with advanced technical training on BW-specific topics. • Over the past several years, we have more than doubled our number of 

BW analysts. 94 percent of our total BW and CW analysts have degrees in 

relevant technical fields such as Biology, Microbiology, Biochemistry, Pharmacology, Epidemiology, Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, and Chemical 

Engineering. 57 percent hold Master’s or Ph.D.-level degrees. • Not only has this increased our depth on substantive BW issues, it has 

created numerous opportunities for analysts to go off-line periodically for 

technical training and to attend scientific meetings and exchanges. 

• We also encourage and pay for analysts to pursue advanced technical degrees. 

2. Secondly, we have institutionalized outreach to scientific experts, including some of the highest caliber researchers in the United States. We have 

done this through senior scientific advisory groups, partnerships with worldclass outside experts, bioliterature workshops on cutting-edge research, IC-sponsored conferences on pressing technical issues, formal technical alliances with 

commercial and industry partners, national and international scientific meetings, and ad hoc consultations with a wide range of technical exports. Let me 

give you a few examples. • Under the auspices of the National Intelligence Council, the Science and 

Technology Expert Partnership (know as STEP) as established to ensure 

that scientific and technical analysis in the intelligence community reflects 

the considered judgment of leading US experts. A primary mission was to 

find highly qualified outside experts to help intelligence analysts reach 

judgments in specific areas—which our analysts identify. In 2005, the 

STEP organized 11 two and three day conferences on topics related to BW. 

Top researchers spoke to our analysts about subjects such as Microbial Engineering and Synthesis, Integrated Global Disease Surveillance, Bio-Enable Nanomaterials, DNA Sequencing and Polymerase Chain Reaction 

Analysis, and the Applications of Biotechnology Advancements. 

• Over the past few years, we sponsored two highly technical conferences 

with invited academic, industry, and government experts on Aflatoxins, and 

Orthopoxviruses. We tailored these conferences so that leading US bioscientists could address very specific BW-related questions from our analysts, 

and share their insights on some complex and complicated issues. 

• We want our analysts to stay current in relevant areas of science. One 

way we do this is through quarterly bioliterature reviews—sponsored by the 

IC’s Intelligence Technology Innovation Center—at which leading bio-researchers present state-of-the-art briefings in areas of interest to our analysts. Speakers in the past have addressed topics such as aerosol technologies, host-pathogen relationships, and synthetic biology. 

• In addition to these more formal mechanisms, we have significantly expanded our outreach to US biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, 

and to academia to develop an informal cadre of expertise we can consult 

on an as-needed basis. Our goal is to increase and strengthen such relationships to help us assess and respond to complex technical issues. 

• You have heard from previous speakers about the value of initiatives 

such a BioChem 20/20, so I’ll only say that we strongly support and are 

helping to guide this effort. This kind of forward-leaning approach-driven 

by some of the best minds in our bioscience community—is essential in 

helping us prevent future technology surprise. 

• Along these lines, the Intelligence Science Board—Chartered in 2002 to 

advise senior intelligence leaders on emerging science and technology issues 

of importance to the Community—has been invaluable in creating linkages 
55

between intelligence and expert S&T communities outside the government, 

including bioscientists. 

Let me say a few words about our fight against BW and bioterrorism. Our biological warfare analysts face some unique and formidable challenges. First of all, there 

are few, if any, clear indicators of biological weapons development, BW research and 

legitimate bioscience look the same and require much of the same equipment, expertise, and infrastructure. It is difficult and rare to find the ‘‘smoking gun.’’

• You can think of BW analysis as a 1,000 piece puzzle. Each bit of information 

is a piece of the puzzle, but alone, these pieces probably do not reveal much. 

Understanding the science of BW is a critical part of what we do, but still, it 

is only a piece of the puzzle. 

• Our analysis goes beyond the bioscience to consider other factors that 

may shed light on suspected BW activities. In the case of a State BW program, we consider factors such as motivation and intent, regional security, 

military and industrial infrastructures, cultural and religious issues, leadership, and political stability, to name a few. 

• We spend significant effort working hand-in-hand with collectors to identify approaches for obtaining high-value information on BW programs—

which typically is among a country’s most tightly is among a country’s most 

tightly-held secrets. 

Our goal, and that of others here today, is to obtain better information fill the 

critical knowledge gaps about biological threats worldwide. We have taken a number 

of specific steps toward that end, and will continue to look for outside experts may 

help us further our understanding of the BW threat. 

In closing, I would like to say we fully support the efforts of Ambassador Brill 

and the NCPC to strengthen our work force and create more effective links to outside expertise. We look forward to working closely with the new biological science 

advisory board in the future. 

I thank the Subcommittee for its interest and assistance.

Mr. LINDER. Thank you, Mr. Pease. 

Dr. MACDOUGALL.

STATEMENT OF DR. ALAN MacDOUGALL, CHIEF, 

COUNTERPROLIFERATION SUPPORT OFFICE, DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY 

Mr. MACDOUGALL. Thank you, Chairman Linder, Ranking Member Langevin and Congresswoman Norton. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today on this very important issue. I 

will be very brief and summarize my statement on one of the activities that DIA has ongoing designed to help strengthen our outreach to the scientific community to support our analysts who are 

responsible for understanding the biological weapons threats for 

the U.S. military. 

First, let me say, as was so well emphasized by my colleagues 

here, an assessment of the foreign biological warfare threat very 

clearly requires the biological sciences and technical expertise as a 

core discipline of our intelligence activities. Our goal and approach 

is quite similar to our sister agencies in building internal expertise 

through the recruitment of analysts with the technical degrees in 

the biological sciences and ensuring that they have available to 

them the means to sustain the outreach to the scientific community. 

As mentioned earlier, there are many interagency programs and 

activities that outreach to the scientific community, including DIA, 

a program called BioChem 20/20. We believe that the establishment of the National Counterproliferation Center will not only further these ongoing efforts in the Community to build upon them 

with an eye toward greater integration, the sharing and leveraging 

of expertise across the board, thereby enabling our defense and 
56

homeland communities to better prepare and deal with the biological threat. 

Let me very briefly describe and review the program. DIA established the ChemBio 20/20 program in the late 1990s as a core activity in our Directorate for Analysis. It engages a group of leading 

scientists from across academia, industry and the government. Its 

purpose has been to support Defense and Intelligence Communities 

by looking at and anticipating a potential impact of advancing technologies on the biological and chemical warfare fronts. It engages 

analysts, scientists, technical personnel from across the Community, in the Department of Homeland Security, EPA, Department 

of Agriculture and many others. 

A key element of that program has been the establishment of a 

committee of 20 leading experts in the scientific and technical 

fields from biology, microbiology, engineering and the like. This experts committee has been given secret level clearances and asked 

to work very closely with our analysts, now to help us in our threat 

assessments, including looking at technologies and processes, in 

particular, that may impact our threat assessments. 

A number of studies have been completed by this program, with 

an emphasis on the potential threat technologies looking out over 

the next decade. Since 1999, we have published over 30 of these papers on several topical areas. 

These publications are the result of this collaboration with our 

analysts, the Intelligence Community and government counterparts 

and the external experts. Within the Department of Defense, we 

are particularly interested in understanding how foreign offensive 

biological warfare programs may exploit emerging technologies and 

concepts in their research and development programs, their attempts to weaponize agents and their means of delivering or disseminating them. 

We share these assessments with collectors across the Community to further enable them to identify foreign efforts to take advantage of emerging scientific and technical development. All of 

these papers are classified and designed to alert the policymaker 

on possible trends and developments and to support the acquisition 

community. We widely distribute them, including to key allies. 

On that I would like to summarize. 

[The statement of Mr. MacDougall follows:]

FOR THE RECORD

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ALAN MACDOUGALL

THURSDAY, MAY 4, 2006

INTRODUCTION 

Thank you Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman and members of the Committee for 

inviting me today. I would like to briefly address the role of bioscientists in our intelligence processes and, in particular, the BioChem 20/20 initiative and other Agency outreach efforts to the bioscience community designed to help us accomplish our 

mission. 

Many longstanding challenges exist today, such as integrating the science and intelligence communities on biological warfare (BW) issues, increasing communication 

between the intelligence and the life science and chemical communities, and improving the interactions between technical experts and intelligence analysts in defining 

and assessing the current and future threat. US Intelligence faces the continuing 

task of rapidly identifying, prioritizing, and addressing the wide variety of technical 
57

knowledge gaps facing BW analysts. Emerging threats such as avian influenza and 

the potential for biotechnology surprise or genetic engineering of BW agents pose 

significant additional challenges for intelligence analysis and collection. 

Based on the WMD COMMISSION report’s recommendations, the DNI proposed 

to take several specific measures aimed at better collaboration between the intelligence and biological science communities. DIA has focused its attention on the BW 

threat and has been engaged with a group of leading life scientists academia, industry and government in an endeavor referred to as BioChem 20/20.

BACKGROUND 

By way of background, on 25 November 1998, Defense Intelligence Agency established BioChem 20/20 as an ad element within DIA’s Counterproliferation Support 

Office, the leading analytic element in the Directorate for Analysis. The mission of 

BioChem 20/20 is to lead and focus the Defense Intelligence Community’s assessments to anticipate the impact of advancing technologies on the biological-chemical 

warfare threat. BioChem 20/20 focuses on evaluating new technologies that nationstates or terrorists could exploit to present an array of potential threats to harm 

humans, plants, animals or materiel. 

BioChem 20/20 initiative consists of A Committee of Experts (ACE) of more than 

20 leading scientific and technical (S&T) experts and a select team of DIA and CIA 

biological warfare analysts. These scientific experts work closely within the 

BioChem 20/20 in assessing cutting-edge technologies that could be used to produce 

unique and deadly agents, write papers and assessment on technology and bioscience developments as well as lead and participate in discussions on these topics 

with our analysts. 

The ACE members on BioChem 20/20 serve as experts identifying critical technologies and processes that are not usually considered as part of the emerging 

threat. Studies generated by BioChem 20/20 emphasize potential threat technologies 

looking out over the next decade and not previously available or understood by US 

Intelligence. BioChem 20/20’s composition consists of scientific and technical personnel from US Intelligence and government entities such as Department of Homeland Security, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture, United 

States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease, National Institute of 

Health, Chemical and Biological Center, Lawrence and Los Alamos National Laboratories, National Science and Technology Council, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. 

Since 1999, the BioChem 20/20 group has published over 30 papers in categories 

including: emerging infectious diseases and technologies; delivery mechanisms (conventional and innovative); novel agents; scenarios and proliferation of BW related 

items. These publications are the result of collaboration among our chemical and biological analysts and the ACE, and they attempt to identify and characterize dualuse technologies and concepts that could enable an adversary to develop unexpectedly effective new CBW agents. These analysts and the ACE assess the potential 

for foreign offensive programs to exploit the identified technologies and concepts, including developing, weaponizing, delivering, and disseminating biological and chemical warfare agents. We share these assessments with the collection community to 

enable them to identify foreign efforts to take advantage of emerging scientific and 

technological capabilities. BioChem 20/20 papers are classified and designed to alert 

policymakers and the research and development and acquisition communities to 

possible trends and developments in biological and chemical warfare. The papers are 

widely distributed to include allied countries. 

The ACE members on the BioChem 20/20 are compensated only for their travel, 

meals, accommodations, and related expenses while participating in the quarterly 

BioChem 20/20 executive meetings as well as being available for consultation and 

support year round. The initial BioChem 20/20 meeting was held on the 16 December 1998 at the DIAC. Our last meeting was held at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida 

on and 17 and 18 January 2006. While ACE members currently hold a secret collateral or higher clearance, we are in the process of upgrading all ACE members to 

carry Top Secret clearances. 

BioChem 20/20 was requested to help organize and participate in a workshop 

sponsored by the National Academies’ National Research Council addressing the impact of biotechnology on the future of bioterrorism. 

BioChem 20/20 drafted the futures section of the 2003 BW NIE and produced an 

Emerging Technology Capstone Threat assessment. 

BioChem 20/20 was specifically called out in the WMD Commission report as a 

valuable US Intelligence program. 

The Jefferson Program, another DIA initiative, was established to mitigate technological surprise in the area of bioweapons, toxins, advanced biochemicals, and re-
58

lated activities resulting from emerging developments in offensive chemical and biological warfare programs. This program evaluates and characterizes agents, technologies, and foreign infrastructure. In addition, an expert forum meets periodically 

to discuss future threats. The Jefferson Program maintains an online unclassified 

repository containing CBW related information that is shared throughout US Intelligence. All tasks under the Jefferson Program have an intelligence basis and are 

intended to address analytic intelligence shortfalls. The key focus areas are: 

• Chemical and Biological Agents: The potential of foreign agents and weapons 

is assessed through analysis of known or suspected infectious organisms, toxins, or 

advanced biochemical agents. The distribution of known BW pathogens is assessed 

to assist in differentiating naturally occurring outbreaks from accidental releases a 

state program or intentional use such as in a bioterrorism event. An Avian influenza study will provide a baseline of scientific information which analysts will be 

able to identify gaps, drive collection requirements and better assess threats. 

• Technologies: The capabilities of foreign countries to convert existing conventional weapons or dual-use devices for CBW use and potential advances in CBW 

agent delivery are evaluated. These assessments enable analysts to obtain a reliable 

and secure technical evaluation of foreign material. Current activities include BW 

analyst training and scientific seminars taught by leading scientists outside US Intelligence and visits to biotechnology-related facilities. 

• Infrastructure: The biotechnological production potential of select foreign countries with known, suspected, or potential offensive BW programs is characterized. 

• Biological and Chemical Warfare Online Repository and Technical Holdings 

System (BACWORTH 2): A searchable online database containing agent information 

and full text scientific and technical documents pertaining to CBW related materials 

is maintained by DIA and shared throughout US Intelligence, Department of Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Military Commands, Department of 

Health and Human Services, and the Department of Homeland Security. 

• As part of core knowledge and threat assessment, we have initiated several efforts to help close intelligence gaps including: 

• Augmenting select DIA HUMINT field operating elements with analytic personnel who are Bio Science subject matter experts that can guide and focus collection activities against the highest priority BW targets, improve source vetting, and 

develop new leads and sources better HUMINT targeting; 

• Establishing a DIA HUMINT WMD/Counterproliferation Issue Management division to oversee HUMINT collection issue related to the CBW functional are and 

to further analyst-collector integration, as well as CIA/DIA coordination; 

• Assigning DIA HUMINT targeteers to select DI analytic elements as well as 

DIA field activities to enhance collection against CBW target sets; 

• Promoting greater collaboration between analyst and collector; and among analysts, law enforcement, and scientific experts in academia, industry, and the US 

Government; 

• Collaborating with the National HUMINT Collection Requirements Tasking 

Center, US intelligence experts and scientific experts in academia and industry to 

develop technical collection support guides on avian influenza and other bio-threats; 

• Expanding liaison relationships with our close allies; 

• Establishing liaison relationships with friendly countries that are not currently 

engaged on a scientific and technical level; 

• Developing more forward-looking analyses to understand scientific trends that 

may be exploited by adversaries to develop BW and to position collectors ahead of 

the problem; 

• Defining the relationship between US Intelligence (IC), the Department of 

Homeland Security (DHS), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to help 

create and maintain a national technical BW database; 

• Improving capabilities to collect and analyze global medical intelligence by engaging with scientific experts in academia and industry to acquire data on natural 

distribution of known BW agents, characterize bio-threats risk distribution, database information on foreign medical and veterinary pharmaceutical capabilities, 

model foreign nations’ medical response capabilities, and provide in-depth technical 

guides to assist in intelligence collection against bio-threats. 

Considering the future, DIA will need to: 

• Consider how best to partner with other entities to directly serve customers for 

BW intelligence, including information on research, development, and acquisition 

elements outside of OSD and the combatant commands. 

• Exploit the long-term collection opportunities with greatest potential to provide 

insight regarding foreign BW capabilities and intentions
59

CONCLUSION 

The Defense Intelligence Agency’s BioChem 20/20 project and similar initiatives 

are helping to provide US Intelligence with a cleared panel of external technical experts in the life sciences and associated fields to assist our analysts and collectors 

to more fully understand indications of emerging biological threats. BioChem 20120 

is probably the Intelligence Community’s most effective initiative for collaboration 

between analysts and external world-class experts. 

Building on the BioChem mission 20/20’s, we believe, can further enable US Intelligence whether that be for a greater level of in-depth external experts review of 

our products, development of methodologies and assessments, support to ‘‘red 

teaming’’ or seeking creative approaches to helping us discover advances in the biological and chemical sciences that may facilitate foreign/hostile offensive CBW programs. 

Ultimately, as a result of close and sustained interaction with the bioscience and 

technical communities through programs like BioChem 20120, US Intelligence can 

better address underlying challenges facing its counter CBW mission. 

I look forward to your questions.

Mr. LINDER. Thank you, Dr. MacDougall. 

Ambassador Brill, does your agency determine or make any judgments as to what is the largest threat to us? Nuclear, biological, 

chemical? 

Mr. BRILL. Let me say that the National Counterproliferation 

Center does not do analysis, but I think it is fair to say that as 

we look at the WMD challenges facing this country, I would say the 

first greatest threat of course is in any WMD in the hands of a terrorist, whether it is nuke or bio, each of which would have a greater impact than a chemical, probably. 

Beyond that, I think it is fair to say that we are particularly focused on nuclear threats to the United States, in state programs 

and biological threats to the United States and state programs. 

Mr. LINDER. But you are dealing with the Russians and their 

former programs? 

Mr. BRILL. I think it is fair to say that the Intelligence Community has, and I would defer to my colleagues to my left, but the Intelligence Community has a very broad interest in people who are 

engaged in those kinds of activities. 

Mr. LINDER. Is there any agent in the biology area that is not 

dual purpose, or able to be used both for good and for ill? 

Mr. BRILL. Well, part of the issue, and I will encourage my colleagues to jump in as well, it is not so much agents but it is processes, producing things that are inherently dual use and then what 

comes out of that process can be tweaked. But the process itself is 

inherently dual use. But I would encourage my colleagues to elaborate on the point. 

Mr. PEASE. I think Ambassador Brill had it right. The dual use 

comes from the question of whether the people that we are looking 

at, the potential foes, are looking for a cure for a pathogen or looking to spread the pathogen. 

Mr. LINDER. To do that you would have to have human intelligence? 

Mr. PEASE. Human intelligence is irreplaceable in that arena. It 

is certainly not the panacea. 

Mr. LINDER. If you are seeking HUMINT in the biosciences, do 

you have to have biological and technical expertise to recognize it? 

Mr. PEASE. I will answer that as best I can in the unclassified 

arena. Forgive me if I get too cryptic here. Technical expertise 

helps. If you have to choose between the two, to choose somebody 
60

who can speak to somebody in their own language. In their own 

language may include their own technical language. That is a pretty precious skill to come by. You will never get enough of that. 

We will never be able to look under every rock we like for that 

HUMINT approach, but it is the one that is most likely to yield the 

kind of intelligence that is actionable. 

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Allen, we have had Secretary Chertoff before us 

saying that the greatest catastrophic risks in this country are nuclear and biological. The only way to intercept that is to have intelligence to prevent it from doing damage. 

We spent $108 million in Homeland Security on airlines. What 

percentage of security is spent on op intelligence? 

Mr. ALLEN. Out of the entire Homeland Security budget on intelligence, my budget of course is classified. But it is a very small 

amount of the entire open budget of Homeland Security. 

Mr. LINDER. It may be classified to you, but it has been discussed 

openly in these hearings. 

Mr. ALLEN. I understand that, but I am sworn to support Ambassador Negroponte. He of course controls sources and methods, and 

he classifies my budget. My budget is approved by Secretary 

Chertoff but it reflects the priorities of Ambassador Negroponte, 

and he submits this budget to you. 

Mr. LINDER. Is it your judgment that most of the biosciences 

technology out there can be got through open sources? Are we 

doing a lot on open source examination? 

Mr. ALLEN. I don’t want to go into details about that, but, yes, 

I think we can say, and it has been said repeatedly by many specialists, that there has been a great deal of information dealing 

with how to use bioscience for nefarious purposes, and it goes back 

to literature that has been available for many years. It goes back 

probably to 1960s and 1970s. 

So there is, even though we worry, as I said in my statement, 

about advanced biotechnology, my worry with terrorists deals with, 

as I said, those who may have some knowledge of biotechnology 

and may be able to use somewhat cruder methods. But the results, 

Mr. Chairman, could be very devastating to our country, to our 

homeland security. 

Mr. LINDER. You said that we knew factually that al-Qa’ida was 

seeking to develop BW weapons, and we have disrupted a significant part of their network, but we said we judge its intent to develop BW continues. Is that based upon a presumption, or do we 

have more information? 

Mr. ALLEN. I do not want to speak on specifics here but based 

on what has been publicly released and based on the statements 

that we have just seen from the leadership of Osama bin Laden, 

Dr. Zawahiri and others, their intent is to attack and destroy the 

United States and its interests worldwide. 

I think we have every reason to believe that Osama bin Laden 

has never changed his opinion. As you recall, I believe there was 

a fatwa issued back in February of 1998, which said it was okay 

to use nonconventional weaponry in attacking the United States 

and the West. 
61

I don’t believe we have any evidence to suggest that they are 

somehow becoming benevolent in their attitudes towards the 

United States. 

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Pease, the biological community is a scientific 

community. Scientists have spent their entire academic career 

going through wide open processes, publishing everything, sharing, 

traveling to seminars in various countries, a wide open environment. That is not the Intelligence Community’s environment. 

Are those two circumstances antithetical? 

Mr. PEASE. Antithetical, perhaps not cross-cultural, certainly, 

and you will see the intelligence professionals in this room twitch 

that it is an open room. We know that they can learn things in that 

open environment that we are interested in. We know that there 

is much that they learn in that open environment that they are not 

in a position to judge. Is it illicit activity that they are hearing references to completely legitimate activity. 

We know that we have got to sift through much low grade ore 

in those kinds of conferences to get the kinds of nuggets that are 

of an intelligence interest and are actionable in the intelligence 

channel. 

We are willing to put up with the cross-cultural communication 

that I referred to to get at some of that knowledge. It is a slow, 

frustrating process to do that. 

Where we do best is where outside biological experts have 

worked with us for long enough that they get a sense of what we 

can use and what is just a distraction to them. 

Mr. LINDER. Why is any of this life sciences information even 

necessary to be classified? 

Mr. PEASE. The life sciences information I would suggest overwhelmingly needs to be unclassified if we are talking about healing 

diseases for people. You would not find me arguing that we need 

to lock down that knowledge or that if we wanted to we could. In 

that knowledge is an inherent threat, and that is part of the threat 

that we live with, and we are all seized with just how very real 

that is. 

Mr. LINDER. That is for analytical people? 

Mr. PEASE. Indeed. 

Mr. LINDER. Dr. MacDougall, have our BW programs that we 

used to have in the 1950s and 1960s ended? 

Mr. MACDOUGALL. Yes. 

Mr. LINDER. Have they been helpful to us in learning about other 

proposals, or are they so old with such refined agents that they are 

not applicable to today? 

Mr. MACDOUGALL. No, sir. Actually, we continue to draw on the 

knowledge that was developed during this program, activities, and, 

indeed, I would make sure we catalog the amount of that, making 

it available to the analytic community, indications of the kinds of 

activities we might otherwise expect foreigners to pursue. So that 

is a valuable resource on behalf of the analytic community. 

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Allen, would it be helpful for us to have security 

clearances for State public health leaders so that they could be 

more involved in the information and be more engaged in seeking 

what might be threatening? 
62

Mr. ALLEN. As I indicated in my statement, one of our responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security is to serve as a 

conduit to get information and to share that information with State 

and local governments and with the private sector, and we try to 

do that right across the board on all threats. 

Obviously at some levels, in some issues, it is helpful, and, of 

course, we have the ability and the responsibility on a select basis 

to clear people who may need Secret-level clearances. This is not 

a big issue. I sponsor clearances at State and local level and obviously with the private sector as well. 

Most of our information though is advisory and is out there at 

sort of—at a sensitive but unclassified level for their purposes. We 

have a growing and developing rich relationship at the State and 

local level. 

Mr. Langevin and others, and I have talked about this. We have 

all been up to—he asked us to talk to some people in Massachusetts about sharing some information. 

Mr. LINDER. Thank you all. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for your 

testimony. It has been very helpful. 

I would like to turn our attention, if I could, to the area of study 

of the life sciences and cultural exchanges. One of our best defenses, I guess an interesting conundrum, you might say, one of our 

best defenses is to bring people here to see the United States, to 

experience freedom and democracy themselves, as opposed to just 

getting information about what the United States stands for from 

Al Jazeera or other networks. 

Yet if a student comes here to study life sciences, I am told, that 

even at the basic science 101 levels they learned quite a bit and 

could actually—the studies could actually turn out to be dangerous, 

they could choose to use it against us. What are your recommendations in the field of managing that relationship, who comes here 

and studies, and your thoughts on it? 

Mr. BRILL. Well, I would be happy to take an initial crack at it. 

I will defer to Mr. Allen. 

Mr. ALLEN. I will speak as well. 

Mr. BRILL. Speaking as someone who worked in the diplomatic 

realm and who is now in the intelligence realm, I think your characterization of people coming to America, learning about America 

is useful. Building those bridges is very important for our national 

security. 

When it comes to studying technical issues, the issue is not so 

much at the basic level. You can study basically almost any place 

in the world now. In fact, the United States higher education is 

competing with a number of other countries, higher education institutions. 

So knowledge is rapidly dispersed in the age of globalization we 

live in. I think what is important is that when people come to this 

country we would like to make sure when they are doing advance 

studies they are working in areas that are constructive. I think 

that when they study in the United States they tend to study in 

an environment that promotes constructive use of technology as op-
63

posed to destructive use of it. Generally it is good. We have to be 

careful in some specific areas. 

Mr. ALLEN. Congressman Langevin, it is a very good question. 

We have to do the balance. Of course, part of the responsibilities 

of the Department of Homeland Security is to ensure that as we 

look at visas and how they are issued for students by the Department of State, that these are handled in a very careful way. 

Of course, as you know, we have various checklists, and I think, 

from what I see, prior to 2001, what we see today, we encourage 

foreign students from across the world to come and study in the 

United States. I think it is absolutely crucial. But there is greater 

care as visas are issued and students come here. We are doing this 

in a number of visa areas, including religious workers where we 

had a very carte blanche approach one time and now it is much 

tighter. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. In Part I of our hearing, the witnesses were all 

very impressed with the sophistication of the biological and medical 

and intelligence capabilities of the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center, AFMIC. Of course this is an open-ended unclassified hearing, if you could please describe the major activities of 

AFMIC and how we might describe that as a model beyond military mission of force production and apply these techniques to military technology activity. 

Mr. MACDOUGALL. Sir, if you will beg my indulgence, we have 

with me today the chief scientist for the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center, Dr. Miller. I would like her to respond to that 

question. 

Ms. MILLER. Thank you. I am honored to speak with you this 

afternoon. The Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center is part of 

the Defense Intelligence Agency. We have been part of the Defense 

Intelligence Agency since the early 1990s, but we have been part 

of the medical intelligence since the 1900s, as part of the Army. 

We have a long history of doing medical intelligence. Our primary role is to look at foreign infectious disease, environmental 

health threats, medical infrastructure, health systems and biotechnology trends. We do that in support of the White House, the 

Secretary of Defense and other Federal agents. So our role is to 

look at foreign infectious diseases and how they might impact 

forces being sent overseas. 

But we also now have a role of looking at those foreign infectious 

diseases and what impact they may have on the health or welfare 

of the United States in our role partnering with the Department 

of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and the USDA. 

So we are actively engaged in improving our scientific expertise 

by having rotations of our partner agencies. We use as a model a 

foreign example for you this afternoon. Our military members that 

are staffed at AFMIC come from the medical services of the Army, 

Navy and the Air Force. They are medical professionals. They come 

to AFMIC for a 3-year tour, and we train them in intelligence. So 

they have scientific and technical expertise in their various fields, 

virology, environmental health, industrial hygiene, toxicology. I 

could go on. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Could I ask, in that respect, that is an interesting 

issue because it raises another question I was going to ask. I was 
64

going to get back to how we could apply these to these techniques, 

to nonmilitary intelligence activities. But the other thing is, is it 

better to train medical personnel in the area of intelligence and 

analysis or is it better to do it the other way around? 

Ms. MILLER. Let me answer the first question first, then I will 

get to the second one. I use that military medical professionals as 

a model, because that is a model that I think is relevant across the 

Community. With other agencies, to have them come and do a 3-

year tour at AFMIC I think would be beneficial, not only to 

AFMIC, because it gives us reachback to their agencies, but also 

to their agencies it gives them training and understanding of intelligence and how to apply intelligence in their decisionmaking. That 

is why I gave that example. 

I think I forgot your second question, if you will forgive me. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. If you want to expand on what you were saying 

originally, whether it is better—

Ms. MILLER. To train medical professionals or intelligence professionals. I think you will get a different answer if you looked across 

the table. For medical intelligence, I totally agree that you have to 

have a multidisciplinary team, that intelligence is not just about 

the science, it is about the threat. The threat, if it is 

counterproliferation, may be intent, and my colleagues can talk 

more eloquently about that. 

But in the medical arena, it is contextualizing the intelligence. 

Just because you are a scientist does not necessarily mean that you 

are trained in analysis and can contextualize the intelligence. It is 

really important to have a multidisciplinary team. 

Mr. LINDER. Would you yield? 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Of course. 

Mr. LINDER. I would like to ask you a question on that. We have 

medical personnel at all of our embassies, and we have undercover 

people at many embassies for the CIA. Would it be helpful for them 

in our program to have a 10-week course in epidemiology to recognize some of these problems? 

Ms. MILLER. Well, you are speaking to an epidemiologist so I 

guess my answer would probably be—epidemiology is a multidisciplinary field. It trains you to look at the question. My background 

is, I am a former epidemic intelligence, foreign intelligence officer 

from the CDC. So I have been trained to look at what is the question. 

That is the bottom line for intelligence, too. You have to use the 

evidence that you have from your science background, but you also 

have to answer the question in an actionable form. 

Mr. LINDER. Which you did not do. The question was, would it 

be helpful to have some epidemiology training for—

Ms. MILLER. Well, I am not sure I should tell the Department of 

State what to do with their medical officers, but, yes, I do believe 

it would be helpful. 

Mr. LINDER. Thank you. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Can you touch upon the Armed Forces Medical 

Intelligence Center’s real-time monitoring that you do, and is that 

a robust system in terms of being able to know rather quickly if 

there is an outbreak somewhere? Or if there is something that 

doesn’t look like something naturally occurring or a bioweapons at-
65

tack or something that would happen, would you know that realtime or after the fact? 

Ms. MILLER. In this forum I would say it has to depend. We are 

focused on specific diseases of concern to military operations at this 

time. If we are talking about real-time warning, I don’t think there 

is such a thing within the Public Health Community or the Intelligence Community on infectious diseases. 

We need to improve public health infrastructure so that we can 

detect events early. That, I think, is part of our Nation’s goals in 

partnering with other foreign nations, with health and human 

services and their efforts overseas with the Department of Defense 

overseas laboratories. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. I asked the question, because one of the things 

that we have a concern about is our ability to monitor public systems as policymakers, or at the top levels of health, and enhancing 

our ability to respond more quickly if there were an outbreak or 

something to that effect. Is there something you wanted to share 

with us in that respect? 

Ms. MILLER. Well, I think we need to continue to be vigilant. We 

need to continue to improve. But intelligence is one of the many 

tools that we use in monitoring the world globally. 

Ms. MILLER. And our role is to try to identify those events that 

may be gaps where the Health and Human Services or others don’t 

have access to that information and to contextualize those. So we 

do focus very clearly limited resources on key countries that perhaps are non-permissive. We do get information in the public 

health community through the WHO and through Health and 

Human Services from many countries directly, and that perhaps 

we should be focused in intelligence where are the gaps. That is 

what we are looking at with our partners. 

Mr. ALLEN. Congressman Langevin, could I just add to her comments. Under the Department of Homeland Security, we have the 

National Bio-Surveillance Integration System that has just been 

standing up under the Chief Medical Officer. This group looks 

worldwide, globally at any kind of early warning, looking at open 

material around the world to see if there are any indications of a 

natural outbreak, or maybe something that would be more nefarious. My office provides intelligence in support of the National BioSurveillance Integration System. And we certainly—this group 

works with AFMIC very closely. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. My last question, if I could, in our last hearing 

it was mentioned that the failure of the Chiron Company to provide 

flu vaccine for the 2004–2005 flu season, and now the Avian flu influenza situation are example perhaps of intelligence failings. For 

example, the intelligence community would have been well aware 

of a pending oil shortage or other substance considered important 

for national security. AFMIC would know, for example, if the Pentagon had enough vaccines or other protective health measures for 

their soldiers. 

So the question is do you think the intelligence committee should 

include the threat of infectious diseases, whether intentionally or 

naturally occuring, as a threat that must be cracked? 

Ms. MILLER. Yes, sir, I do. 
66

Mr. ALLEN. I think we have no choice, because we have to make 

certain that when we see an outbreak, I think AFMIC does it very 

well, to make certain that this is natural, that it is nothing something being spread by bioterrorists. It is incumbent on the intelligence community to look at it very hard. 

Mr. LINDER. Ms. Norton. 

Ms. NORTON. I want to thank you for your important work and 

with the new configuration post-9/11, you are the real start-up people. I really want to—I have a couple of questions, but I want to 

build on what the ranking member has just indicated, because if 

you were to ask the average American today what bio threat concerned her, you would probably come back with something that 

perhaps is not normally understood in the intelligence community 

so much as a quote bio threat, and that is, of course, Avian flu. And 

the President or the administration has just rolled out some plans 

on that with some controversy, but it obviously is trying to get 

ahead of that. 

My question really goes to what the 9/11 legislation was trying 

to do, and one of the things was to deal with the stovepiping. Of 

course, my district is the district which had the anthrax matter 

and was, I think, dealt with well, largely because it never spread 

in the way it might have. But obviously with Avian flu, that kind 

of pandemic that the public has been hearing so much about, there 

is a great concern about whether or not this really could be passed 

to humans, whether it could make it here. Indeed, there is some 

view that yes, it could, it is when will it make it here. 

I don’t understand and would like to know from you what—in 

some of the other committees, we have talked to CDC. I don’t understand what, if any, role you play in matters like predicting 

whether or not this kind of pandemic is making its way to our 

shores. 

When you talk about foreign diseases, that is the first thing I 

think the average person would think about, would be this flu, and 

particularly given the fact that it is new, we have no vaccine, we 

don’t have any effective drugs, we are told that there are very limited—I am not sure if it is 5,000 doses of what drug we do have. 

The plan that was rolled out yesterday didn’t even say who should 

get those drugs, limited as they are, as a priority. That is, at the 

very least, it seems to me what I would have wanted to know. 

As far as I am concerned, I hope it would go to health care workers to handle the rest of us. 

In any case, I am really interested in here is something right on 

the front pages. There you are. Are you relevant to it? Do you help 

predict whether or not it is coming and when? What is your relationship to the CDC and others are charged with working on this 

matter? 

Mr. BRILL. Let me take a crack at a little bit of an umbrella 

statement and turn to Mr. Allen for more detailed comment. As I 

mentioned in my statement, the challenge of pandemics for the intelligence community is that we are there to help. It is principally 

a public health issue. And you have to think, I think, about information on bio threats running across a continuum of publicly available information, medically available information, intelligence 

kinds of information. I think the role of the intelligence community 
67

in something like a pandemic is to make sure that U.S. authorities 

have available to them information relevant to a pandemic that 

may not be publicly available for one reason or another. One can 

imagine a variety of reasons people might trying to be cover up information about it. Our job in that case would be to find information that should be available to people. 

Ms. NORTON. For example, everybody is looking for a bird to fly 

in, and that is how we might, in fact, find it on our shores. Well, 

could somebody bring in a bird deliberately and weaponize, as it 

were, some bird or other— 

Mr. BRILL. That would be clearly an intelligence-related activity 

to be keeping—being alert to those efforts of people to take advantage of a nationally occurring disease and to turn it into something 

that would be applied as a weapon. There is a role for the intelligence community in that. 

Ms. NORTON. Would that be your role, from what I just described. CDC is supposed to look for the bird flying up there. Who 

looks for somebody bringing in a bird? 

Mr. BRILL. Let me defer. What NCPC does is what you referred 

to as post-9/11, is breaking down stovepipes. We are part of the 

OD&I, bringing people together. The second conference of U.S. Government officials, as I mentioned in my opening statement, is about 

bringing the intelligence community together with the rest of the 

U.S. Government agencies that are involved in issues like international public health questions to make sure that information the 

intelligence community generates would be relevant to what they 

do and information they generate would be relevant to helping the 

intelligence community in its mission. It is two different kinds of 

communities, one dealing with basically unclassified information, 

the other dealing with classified. 

Ms. NORTON. Do you deal with CDC, for example, now, as I 

speak? 

Mr. BRILL. Not personally. The intelligence community does, yes. 

Let me defer now to our Department of Homeland Security. 

Mr. ALLEN. Thank you very much, Ambassador. 

Congresswoman, obviously, I am speaking from an intelligence 

perspective, and the part of Homeland Security works very closely 

with Health and Human Services, including obviously the Center 

for Disease Control. 

Ms. NORTON. Which, of course, is not even in the intelligence 

community, not in homeland security. 

Mr. ALLEN. I think the Ambassador has described very well the 

intelligence responsibilities, that is to look and try to track the 

spread of the avian flu, and of course, this has been detected in 

Asia and parts of Europe. As you know, the H5M1 virus, it has not 

it has not spread here to the United States, and it is very rare and 

very difficult for either poultry or migratory birds to spread this 

disease to humans. It has not been—there has been no cases of 

human to human transmission. 

But, at the same time, and I don’t want to speak about all the 

preparations that health and human services and the rest of the 

Department of Homeland Security are undertaking, that was, of 

course, what Ms. Townsend spoke about yesterday from the White 

House. There is an extraordinary effort underway. Our role is to 
68

look at the intelligence to make sure that we have good information 

and that countries abroad are not hiding the extent and spread of 

that disease. 

Part of our responsibility, of course, is to work with our chief 

medical officer and keep him and Secretary Chertoff briefed, and 

to also work with the National Bio-Surveillance Integration group 

which is under the chief medical officer. So it is an effort to ensure 

that all information, including classified information, is brought to 

bear to Secretary Chertoff, to Ms. Townsend and to other leaders 

in the Secretary of Health and Human Services. 

Mr. Pease may have some comments on this about the analytic 

side. 

Mr. PEASE. The nexus of disease and use of the disease as a warfare tactic, maybe I can illustrate with some cooperation that we 

did with CDC during the West Nile virus—‘‘scare’’ is the wrong 

word—but when that was on the front pages of the papers. And we 

had allegations that West Nile was being intentionally spread by 

one of our foreign folks. 

There were allegations in intelligence channels of that. That 

would have been an event and was indeed an event where we were 

very quickly in touch with the Center for Disease Control looking 

for any signs that this is unnaturally spreading. In this particular 

event, it did not play out as a biological warfare tactic, it played 

out as a natural spreading event. But that kind of dialog between 

the intelligence community and the Center for Disease Control is 

what you would expect to happen, and what indeed did happen 

very quickly. 

Ms. NORTON. That is exactly the kind of information I was looking for, particularly since CDC is not in Homeland Security and not 

in the intelligence network. 

One more question, if I may, Mr. Chairman. 

Ambassador Brill raised an issue that is of great importance to 

me in another of my committees. There is a huge issue involving 

the Federal workforce that has—could be depleted tomorrow, 

frankly, because of early retirement, huge issue of competing with 

the private sector and highly specialized personnel. Ambassador 

Brill, in his testimony, alluded to this issue as part of what you see 

as the mission to build a workforce. And I take it it is a Governmental workforce. We have got to have folks on the inside and, of 

course, use what is available to us in the private sector. 

But my question really goes to where the exciting things are happening. Exciting things are happening in science in the private sector. Nobody can put in an amendment to keep them from looking 

at this, that and the other. If you are one of the young people, and 

there are far too few of them, who are graduating, particularly with 

a Ph.D. from one of our universities today, one is really left to wonder what it is that would draw you to the Federal Government and 

where we are going to get a workforce that is of the quality we 

need when we are competing with the private sector where all the 

innovation and where all the discovery is taking place. 

It is very worrisome to me because I don’t see that we are able 

to get workforce in areas that are far less specialized and far less 

skilled than the workforce we will need if the biological areas that 

have been under discussion here today. 
69

I appreciate how you think we can do that and what we could 

do, what kinds of extra incentives we need. 

Mr. BRILL. Let me speak from the perspective of the ODNI and 

urge my colleagues to jump in as well. What it takes, I think, is 

a strategic approach for this very important issue across the intelligence enterprise, not one agency at a time. In the past, the intelligence community didn’t have really the authorities to operate personnel issues across the enterprise the way it does now with the 

establishment of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. 

In the counterproliferation area, we plan to take full advantage 

of these authorities to think strategically about how we hire and 

retain the people to do the important work that needs to be done 

at WMD. 

I think, quite frankly, as someone who is not from the intelligence community, from the foreign service, I am not a scientist, 

I am one of those classic liberal arts types, but what is happening 

now in the intelligence community and the challenges that the intelligence community is dealing with in the S&T areas, science and 

technology area, having been briefed in recent months on this, is 

some of the most exciting and challenging science you can imagine 

a bright young person might want to take on. The question is how 

do we get that word out to people, set up a career structure that 

is attractive and get people in to do it. Because we can’t go into 

details in an open session, but we want physicists to bend the laws 

of physics, chemists to do remarkably interesting things for us in 

order to deal with the challenges we face in counterproliferation 

and the intelligence community. 

So we have the work that can excite and attract people but we 

have to think as an enterprise about how do that so we don’t compete with each other and set up a system of incentives that will 

work. 

Mr. PEASE. If I could throw in a ray of hope here. The last recruiting trip that I went on was last October, in this case, out to 

the west coast. Because of my office, I am trying not to recruit technically trained people from academic institutions when I go to an 

academic institution to recruit. Every day that I was out there recruiting, I had a full day with people lined up wanting to talk to 

me about working in the CIA. I had not anticipated this. I have 

done this 2 years in a row, the same universities, and I expected 

that because of the increase in bad press about CIA that the lines 

would disappear. Lot of lines of people wanting to see whether 

their skills would be suitable to our work, wanting to see if they 

could launch a career where they can make a difference in working 

against the bad guys. It was one of the most invigorating things 

that I have done in the last year, but it is echoed by what I hear 

from my other recruiters that have gone all over the United States. 

Ms. NORTON. Yes. 

Mr. MACDOUGALL. We have no shortage of good resumes coming 

into the community of the highest caliber technical folks and the 

percentage of Ph.D. and advance degrees in our workforces. 

Ms. NORTON. In what fields? 

Mr. MACDOUGALL. All kinds of fields. Microbiologists, technical 

experts in bioengineering and the like, critical to this problem set 

for us. As I think was emphasized earlier by my colleagues, build-
70

ing the expertise within the community is our first and most important job. We must have experts looking at the critical data that 

help us unlock the secrets in order to assess the threats. And that 

starts with our cadre. We echo and we champion the National 

Counterproliferation Center’s strategy in this because it is fundamental in my opinion to the future of this workforce. So I share my 

colleague’s ray of hope. It has been very invigorating. Extraordinarily talented folks coming to us. 

Mr. ALLEN. Congresswoman, I would like to speak also. We are 

just standing up my Office or Intelligence, we are very new, and 

we are standing up a bioterrorism section. We have four people 

working in it and we have two that more we are hiring. Two of 

those officers currently have their Ph.D. We are getting good applications. I just reclassified some of my positions that are yet to be 

filled for entry level students off the universities. We also sent a 

small recruiting team to a number of universities and the response 

has been really astounding. There are a lot of good, bright young 

Americans out there wanting to work for their country. 

Ms. NORTON. The novelty of it should be very helpful to you. We 

have got some of the best and brightest during the new deal and 

people saw new agencies and things the government hadn’t done 

before. I had read about what the CIA has done. I don’t care if it 

is from CSI or whatever kinds of movies, I was very encouraged by 

that. 

What really encourages me and gives me an understanding that 

I did not have before is your discussion of the enterprise. If you 

want to compete with someone really, really juiced up about something about something that a particular private sector scientific 

corporation is doing, one way, and I am particularly interested in 

science, one way might be the enterprise nature of the Federal 

Government, the notion that you could, in fact, get work in various 

aspects, bio threats, for example, you could work across the agencies. 

You could get the kind of experience you could never get in any 

one private corporation. Seems to me that would be exciting, and 

maybe even exciting enough to take the pay that you have to take 

or the pay cut that you have to take by coming to work for the Federal Government. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. LINDER. I thank you all. This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:04 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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