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COMBATING TERRORISM: ASSESSING THE THREAT

OF A BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS ATTACK

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,

VETERANS AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 12, 2001

Serial No. 107–103

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE WELDON, Florida

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

——— ———

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

JAMES C. WILSON, Chief Counsel

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, VETERANS AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE WELDON, Florida

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

TOM LANTOS, California

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

——— ———

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

LAWRENCE J. HALLORAN, Staff Director and Counsel

NICHOLAS PALARINO, Senior Policy Advisor

JASON CHUNG, Clerk

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on October 12, 2001 .......................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Decker, Raymond, Director, Defense Capabilities Management Team,

U.S. General Accounting Office; Ken Alibek, president, Advanced Biosystems, Inc.; John Parachini, policy analyst, Rand Corp.; and Jerrold

Post, M.D., professor of psychiatry, political psychology and international affairs, George Washington University ........................................ 4

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Alibek, Ken, president, Advanced Biosystems, Inc., prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 21

Allen, Hon. Thomas H., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Maine, prepared statement of .................................................................. 58

Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Missouri, prepared statement of .................................................................. 66

Decker, Raymond, Director, Defense Capabilities Management Team,

U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared statement of ............................ 7

Parachini, John, policy analyst, Rand Corp., prepared statement of ........... 27

Post, Jerrold, M.D., professor of psychiatry, political psychology and international affairs, George Washington University, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 43

(1)

COMBATING TERRORISM: ASSESSING THE

THREAT OF A BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS ATTACK

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2001

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, VETERANS

AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Shays, Putnam, Gilman, Platts, Allen,

Schakowsky, and Clay.

Staff present: Lawrence J. Halloran, staff director and counsel;

R. Nicholas Palarino, senior policy advisor; Thomas Costa, professional staff member; Jason M. Chung, clerk; David Rapallo, minority counsel; and Earley Green, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. SHAYS. I would like to call this hearing to order and welcome

our panel and our guests. Before September 11, assessing the

threat of biological terrorism was disdained by some as little more

than an academic or a bureaucratic exercise. Today, as we worry

about access to crop dusters and suspicious anthrax exposures in

Florida, a clear-eyed, a fully informed view of the threat imposed

by weaponized pathogens is a national security imperative. But we

still have no comprehensive threat assessment and achieving that

essential perspective remains a challenge. Assessing the threat of

bioterrorism requires a sober judgment about the motivations, intentions and capabilities of people so intoxicated with hate and

evil, they would kill themselves in the act of killing others.

The questions that confound the assessment process, when and

where will terrorists use biological weapons against us, how will

the agent be disbursed, for what type and magnitude of attack

should we be prepared. Available answers offer little comfort and

less certainty in assessing the threat. Some conclude the technical

difficulties of large scale production and efficient dissemination reduce the likelihood terrorists will use lethal agents to inflict mass

casualties anytime soon. Others think those barriers have been or

will soon be overcome. Still others believe that neither large quantities nor wide dispersions are required to inflict biological terror.

From this cacophony of plausible opinions, those charged with

formulating a national counterterrorism strategy must glean a rational estimate about the irrational possibility of biological attack.

Perhaps the most difficult dimension of the threat to assess is the

2

deep-seated, almost primal fear engendered by the prospect of maliciously induced disease.

For the terrorists, that fear is a potent force multiplier capable

of magnifying a minor manageable outbreak into a major public

crisis. Failure to account for this unique aspect of biological terrorism understates the threat, increasing our vulnerability. Overstating the threat based on fear alone invites overreaction in which we

waste scarce resources and terrorize ourselves with Draconian security restrictions. If you live in a flood plane, you plan for the 10-

year or even 20-year flood. You don’t expect every flood to reach the

100-year level. If the least likely but worst case scenario dominates

your planning, you would spend every day sitting on the roof in a

raincoat waiting for the catastrophic deluge.

Instead, accepting some risk, you would prudently assess the

likelihood of storm surge, buy an extra case of water and some

flashlights and go on about your life. After September 11, we all

live in a bio-terrorism flood plain and we should plan accordingly.

A workable assessment of the biological threat demands an open

discussion of risks, vulnerabilities and fears. It is that discussion

we continue today. It is the discussion we will have again October

23, when Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson

and others will appear before the subcommittee to discuss the role

of vaccines in our near term and long-term preparedness against

biological attack.

We truly welcome our witnesses and thank them for sharing

their time, their expertise and their opinions with us today. At this

time, I think we will recognize our senior and most experienced

member, the gentleman from New York. You have the floor.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I want

to thank you for holding today’s hearing to examine the overall

threat posed by biological terrorism and the steps needed to be

taken by our government to establish an effective response to a biological weapons attack. But I want to commend you, too, for your

continual efforts to try to prepare our government for all kinds of

emergencies that we may be experiencing as a result of terrorism.

Your recent meeting yesterday where we shared thoughts with

some of our experts on anti-terrorism, an informal meeting, but a

highly experienced group that was giving us some thoughts that we

shared together; the fractionalization hearing on our Government’s

efforts spread through so many of our agencies; lack of threat assessment; the need for force protection; domestic preparedness; detection technology; hearings on anthrax, chemical warfare.

You ought to be commended for this extremely intensive review

of our government’s programs to prepare our Nation better for

these kinds of problems. And I don’t think we can commend you

enough for your continual efforts in this area. For many years, the

possibility of a biological terrorist attack occurring in our Nation

seemed absurd, something to be relegated to the realm of science

fiction. Regrettably, the barbaric events of September 11th, have

sharply focused our national attention on terrorism and have underscored our vulnerability to future attacks. Indeed, the bioterrorism debate has been transformed from a question of if to the seeming inevitably of when and how. The task of developing an overall

strategy to successfully counteract any domestic act of biological

3

terrorism has proven to be a difficult challenge for our Federal and

State policymakers.

Yet, there can be no doubt that there is now a sense of urgency

for the resolution of this task that was not critical before this. Biological terrorism is now at the fore of our national agenda. There

has been a great deal of debate in recent years about the nature

of the biological terror, both in terms of where the threat originates, what specific agents pose the greatest danger. So far, the

media has focused its attention on anthrax and smallpox, yet those

represent merely two of the many agents which conceivably could

be utilized by terrorists in any future attack. Since September

11th, we have been engaged in a war on terrorism. The President

has told us it is going to be a long, protracted struggle which we

all recognize; the very real potential of additional attacks on our

own soil. The FBI just yesterday warned us of the possibility of an

imminent attack.

Given that, it is in our interest to place greater effort on identifying both the capability of those who are likely to use biological

weapons against us as well as to be able to develop effective

counterterrorism measures and responses to any future attack. I

look forward, along with my colleagues, to the testimony that we

are going to hear from our distinguished panel of witnesses, and

I am certain that their experience and insight will prove helpful to

us and to this committee as Congress works to find its role in this

suddenly urgent and vexing issues.

So once again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for your outstanding

leadership on these important topics. And I hope you will continue

in that vein. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman yourself. And I would say

whatever compliments go to the staff. We have an excellent staff

on this committee. At this time, I would recognize the vice-chairman of the committee, Adam Putnam and see if he has any statement.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your continued leadership on this issue. As everyone in this room knows,

this subcommittee has held more hearings on the threats from terrorism, including chemical and biological weapons, more than any

other committee in the Congress, and we appreciate your continued

leadership and look forward to the testimony from this panel.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank the gentleman.

Mr. Platts.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just echo the

comments of my colleagues and our appreciation for your leadership in holding these very important hearings and to convey my

sincere thanks to our witnesses here today, to share your expertise

on a critically important issue and at a very relevant time in our

Nation’s struggles against threats from others. So thank you for

being here.

Mr. SHAYS. Before I recognize the witnesses, I just want to thank

the members of this committee for being strong and active participants. Just recognizing our witnesses and then I will swear you all

in and we will take your testimony. We have Raymond Decker, Director of Defense Capabilities Management Team, U.S. General AcVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:06 Oct 28, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\81782.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
4

counting Office. He is going to talk about threat and risk assessment and how it is done, more or less.

We will have Ken Alibek, who is the former deputy head of the

Soviet Union bioweapons program and an author of Biohazard and

president of Advanced Biosystems, Inc. John Parachini, a policy analyst for RAND Corp., biological threat and terrorist groups. I

think you will be addressing that issue and others.

Gerald Post, professor of psychiatry, political psychology and

international affairs, George Washington University, who will

share with us the motivation of terrorists. And it is my understanding, Dr. Post, that you have probably interviewed more terrorists than most anyone else.

We have an excellent panel. Just truly an excellent panel. I

would like to invite you all to stand and swear you in. We swear

in all our panelists.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Everyone has responded in the affirmative. Thank

you very much and have a seat. I am going to ask unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee be permitted to place

an opening statement in the record and the record remain open for

3 days for that purpose. Without objection, so ordered. I ask further

unanimous consent that all witnesses be permitted to include their

written statement in the record. Without objection, so ordered.

We are going to go in the order that I called you. And let me say

on the outset that I am very appreciative of the fine work that the

General Accounting Office does. And I am also grateful, Mr. Decker, that you don’t say you need to have a separate panel and that

you are willing to participate in a larger panel. Maybe that doesn’t

seem unusual to you, but some in the government like to have

their own panel. So I want to put on the record, thank you. It

makes it easier for us to have a dialog. So you’re on, Mr. Decker.

STATEMENTS OF RAYMOND DECKER, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE

CAPABILITIES MANAGEMENT TEAM, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; KEN ALIBEK, PRESIDENT, ADVANCED

BIOSYSTEMS, INC.; JOHN PARACHINI, POLICY ANALYST,

RAND CORP.; AND JERROLD POST, M.D., PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY, POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND INTERNATIONAL

AFFAIRS, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Mr. DECKER. Chairman Shays and members of the subcommittee, I am pleased to be here this morning to discuss the issue of

combating terrorism and an approach for managing the risk from

terrorism directed at our homeland. Over the past several years,

we have examined and reported on Federal efforts to combat terrorism to include weapons of mass destruction at the request of

this committee and others. Our body of work includes over 60 products, based on information gleaned from a range of sources to include Federal, State and local governments, foreign governments

and private entities. The events of last month and the long-term

aspects of the national engagement to combat terrorism highlight

the need for effective near and long-term actions at all levels of

government as well as in the private sector.

The designation of a focal point within the Executive Office of

the President to lead the Office of Homeland Security is a positive

5

step. As Governor Ridge begins to craft a national strategy to effectively prepare the Nation from future attacks, we believe a risk

management approach is essential to underpin decisions which

identify requirements, set priorities, direct actions and allocate resources. A risk management is a balanced systematic and analytical process to evaluate the likelihood that a threat will endanger

an asset and identify actions to reduce the risk and mitigate the

consequences of an attack.

We believe a good risk management approach should have three

key elements, threat assessments, vulnerability assessments and

criticality assessments. Allow me to briefly discuss each assessment. A threat assessment is an important process that identifies

and evaluates threats using various factors such as capability, intention, past activity and potential lethality of attacks.

At the national level, the Central Intelligence Agency and other

agencies of the intelligence community are responsible for those assessments that involve international terrorist threats. The Federal

Bureau of Investigation gathers information and assesses the

threat posed by domestic sources of terrorism. In 1999, and again,

in our most recent report on combating terrorism, which was released last month—and this is A22, we had recommended that the

FBI prepare a formal intelligence assessment that assesses the

chemical and biological agents that could be used by domestic terrorists without the assistance or support of a foreign entity. The

FBI concurred and expects to complete the assessment in December of this year.

Additionally, we recommended that the FBI produce a national

level threat assessment using intelligence estimates and input from

the intelligence community and others to form the basis for and to

prioritize programs developed to combat terrorism to include weapons of mass destruction.

Again, the FBI concurred and expects to complete this classified

study later this month. Mr. Chairman, as you know, in April 2000,

we released a report on how other countries, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Israel are organized to combat terrorism. And we noted that these five countries place great emphasis

on threat assessments which address the likelihood of attack. Since

they stress their primary objective is prevention, these assessments

have a significant importance in their planning and a response depending events.

However, I must caution that since all attacks may not be prevented, the following two assessments are essential in preparation.

A vulnerability assessment identifies weaknesses in physical structures, security systems, plans, procedures and a variety of other

areas that could be exploited by terrorists. For example, a common

physical vulnerability might be the close proximity of a parking

area near a building or structure with the obvious concern being

a vehicle laden with explosives. Normally, a multi-disciplinary

team of experts in engineering, security, information systems,

health and other areas normally would conduct this vulnerability

assessment. Teams within an organization can perform these assessments, which is the case used by the Department of Defense.

In a 1998 report, GAO report, we noted that a major U.S. multinational firm used the same approach to better focus its efforts in

6

overseas facilities. The final assessment is the criticality assessment, and these are designed to identify which assets are most important to an organization’s mission or represent a significant target which merit enhanced protection.

For example, nuclear power plants, key bridges, major computer

networks might be identified as critical assets based on national security or economic importance. Some facilities might be critical at

certain times and not at other times. For example, sports stadiums

or a shopping center filled with people might represent a critical

asset. Typically, the affected organization would perform its own

criticality assessment. And we note that the report of the Interagency Commission on Crime and Security in the U.S. seaports

issued late last year, stress the need for these assessments in conjunction with threat and vulnerability assessments.

Mr. Chairman, simply stated, one must know as much as possible about threat, identify one’s weaknesses to potential attack

and determine which assets are most important and require special

attention in order to make sound decisions on preparedness while

leveraging limited resources. I have one caveat about threat assessments. Our national goal is to understand the threat and create assessments to guide our actions. To this end, there are continuous

efforts by the intelligence and law enforcement communities to assess foreign and domestic threats to the Nation. However, even

with these efforts, we may never have enough information on all

threats. So there may be a tendency to use worst-case scenarios in

this situation. Since worst-case scenarios focus on vulnerabilities

and vulnerabilities are almost unlimited and would require exhaustive resources, we believe it is essential that a careful balance exist

using all three assessment elements in preparing and protecting

against threats.

In summary, threat, vulnerability and criticality assessments,

when completed and evaluated together in a risk managementbased approach, will allow leaders and managers to make key decisions which will better prepare against potential terrorist attacks

that may include weapons of mass destruction. If this risk management approach were adopted throughout the Federal Government

and by other segments of society, we believe a more effective and

efficient preparation in-depth against acts of terrorism directed at

our homeland could be affected.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement and I will be pleased

to respond to any questions that the committee may have.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Decker. It is a very helpful statement. And we will definitely have questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Decker follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Alibek.

Mr. ALIBEK. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee,

thank very much for inviting me here. And I think my 26-year long

experience in the field of biological weapons and biological weapons

defense make me, I hope, at least, experience gives me some right

to discuss this issue.

Before I came to the United States in 1992, I was scientific leader of this program in the former Soviet Union. I was responsible

for a large number of scientists and technicians involved in this

program.

Mr. SHAYS. The rumor is it was 30,000.

Mr. ALIBEK. 30,000 people and about 40 facilities involved in research and development of biological weapons and research and development in defense against biological weapons. And we were on

both sides to develop weapons and to develop defense. And now we

know in this country, in the United States, we have a great deal

of confusion when we discuss biological weapons and biological

weapon threat. Some experts discuss and say biological weapons

present very significant threat.

Some people say no, it is not a threat whatsoever. In my opinion,

makes us as disarmed and we don’t pay much attention to necessity to the structure of biological weapons defense. The problem is

this: We discuss in many cases—we discuss anthrax. We discuss

smallpox. We discuss some ways to analyze biological weapons and

whether or not it is difficult. But the problem is this: This issue

is much wider and bigger because when we discuss biological weapons, what we need to keep in mind are several dozen biological

agents could be used in biological weapons.

There are many deployment techniques. And these techniques

are not just aerosol deployment. There are many others. It is not

a situation where someone has to develop a very sophisticated device to deploy biological weapons. These techniques could be, I

would say, used with very primitive devices. And, you know, many

such things, in my opinion, make biological weapons very dangerous, and very effective weapons could be used.

And some people ask why biological weapons? What is the difference between biological weapons, nuclear weapons or regular

conventional weapons? In my opinion, biological weapons have a

very significant attractiveness because of many reasons. As I said

before, a number of different agents could be used; many, many different techniques. And the great diversity of biological weapons

make them effective weapons. And what is important to keep in

mind, biological weapons impose infectious diseases, and each biological weapon could result in absolutely different consequences. I

provided, with some examples, for example, smallpox, anthrax,

plague and Marburg infections. And what I would like to say it’s

just a small number of examples, but if you analyze all these

agents and weapons, you could see how diversified these weapons

are.

And unfortunately, our understanding of biological weapons is

not, I would say, comprehensive enough. What we need to do now,

we need to rectify our understanding and knowledge of biological

weapons. As soon as we start understanding what is a real threat

to biological weapons, we start understanding what kind of defense

19

we need to develop. The problem is this: If we still consider existing approaches in developing defense against biological weapons

are perfect approaches, or plausible approaches, in my opinion, we

make significant mistake. What I notice when we discuss this

issue—when I read many testimonies or articles, we discuss antibiotics. We discuss vaccines. I have nothing against antibiotics.

In many cases, they could protect against bacterial biological

weapons. But when we discuss vaccines, there is a very important

situation why we discuss vaccines. We discuss vaccines as a possible protection for troops or in some other scenarios. Vaccines are

not good protection against—in the case of bioterrorism. And you

know, when we discuss and assess to spend much money to develop

vaccines, it causes a significant question. Why? Vaccine needs to be

introduced well in advance first. You are not capable to vaccinate

entire population. You have no idea against what agent you need

to vaccinate people and so on and so forth. And there is another

issue. Many vaccines have not developed yet.

But we continue pushing this vaccine issue at the same time, you

know, in my opinion, it shifts us toward wrong direction. What we

need to keep in mind in the medical defense, there are three major

areas: Prophylactics or prophylaxes we call it, urgent prophylactics

and treatment. And, you know, when we spend our major resources

to develop vaccines, we don’t spend much time or resources to develop treatment and to develop urgent prophylaxes. In my opinion,

it is a significant mistake that needs to be corrected. There is another issue—it is just one of the part of biological weapons.

Mr. SHAYS. Say that last point over again—the last point.

Mr. ALIBEK. In my opinion, when we discuss a necessity to develop new vaccines, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop new vaccines, we are making a very significant mistake because vaccines are not a good protection in bioterrorism. Now we

have got many agencies, many departments involved in this business. We know that these agencies and these departments have

many subcontractors working in this field. But you know when we

try to understand what is the scope of the problem and what the

scope of the work, for example, their agencies and departments do,

in my opinion, it wouldn’t be possible just to create more or less

comprehensive and truthful picture. In my opinion, the problem is

this: We still suffer lack of coordination between these agencies.

And do you know if we don’t realize there is time just to develop

a completely new system, we should include, in my opinion, a necessity to establish a new agency, agency which would be responsible completely just to work in the field of biodefense. And this

agency would have responsibility and would have overall authority

and would be able just to manage and revise what is being done

by any agency, by any department in the United States.

In this case, this agency would be able to establish a system, I

would say, highly centralized system to develop protection against

biological weapons. The problem is this. We live in democratic

country, but when we talk about national security issues or when

20

you talk about bioterrorism and possible huge number of casualties, there is no democracy here. It must be highly centralized and

very effective system. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Dr. Alibek.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Alibek follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. We will now go to Mr. Parachini.

Mr. PARACHINI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the

committee for the privilege and opportunity to testify here. Since

the tragic events of September 11th, many Americans have become

concerned about the prospect of biological terrorism. After all, it

seems plausible that hijackers willing to kill themselves, those

aboard commercial airliners and thousands more in the World

Trade Center and Pentagon might be willing to use biological

agents to kill indiscriminately. Yet it is important to maintain

some perspective of the relative dangers. 20th century history of

warfare, terrorism and crime involving biological agents is much

less deadly than that of the history with conventional explosives.

While history is not a perfect guide to the future, it does provide

a context for our thinking about the future. We need to take account of history and hedge against the seeming imponderables of

the future. When it comes to the feasibility of using biological

weapons, States are more likely to have the resources, technical capabilities, organizational capacity to assemble the people, knowhow, material and equipment to produce such weapons and to be

able to clandestinely deliver them to valued targets. Mustering the

resources and capabilities to inflict devastating strikes with biological agents has proved to be formidable tasks even for States.

While some terrorist groups may attempt large scale biological

attempts, perpetrating an attack on a scale as that of September

11th is not likely. At the moment, only States are able to perpetrate clandestinely biological attacks and they are extremely reluctant to do so. Limited attacks using biological agents as common

as salmonella and as rare as anthrax are possible. But the scope

and scale of such attacks will be modest.

On balance, then, a State’s ability to command resources and organize them for certain priorities scientific and industrial objectives

presents the potential for the greatest threat in bioterrorism. What

is more likely than a conscious decision by a country’s command

authority is that an unauthorized faction within a State might take

it upon itself to use a subnational group to do its dirty group. The

alleged involvement of the Iranian Government’s security services

in the attack on American military personnel in Khobart Towers

seems to be an example of this type of involvement.

When it comes to the feasibility of biological terrorism perpetrated by subnational groups and individuals, the range of capability and the level of consequence depends on whether the groups

or individuals are State-sponsored or not. High consequence biological attacks would probably require the assistance of a State

sponsor or some other source of considerable resources. Money,

arms, logistical support training, even training on how to operate

in a chemically contaminated environment, are all forms of assistance States have provided to terrorists. But historically, they have

not crossed the threshold and provided biological weapons material

to insurgency groups or terrorist organizations.

Natural question at this time is whether an organization such as

al Qaeda with the financial support of Osama bin Laden might be

able to amass the resources for a significant biological attack.

Think as we consider this possibility, we need to not only look at

the opportunities, but the disincentives. Too often we envision what

26

we fear and do not take into account the thinking of somebody else.

We think they are thinking like we fear as opposed to how they are

thinking. And I think the most important thing I would draw your

attention to is that terrorists have readily turned to more available

alternatives, explosives.

And indeed, on September 11th, they took an ordinary means of

modern transportation and turned it into an extraordinary killing

device. The only two cases we have where terrorists have used biological weapons, one in 1984, where it was a religious cult group,

the Rajneeshee, and another 11 years later by the Aum Shinrikyo.

Neither of these inflicted the level of casualties that are regularly

the product of conventional explosives. Both of these cases had unusual aspects to them and unusual aspects about their leadership.

They were obsessed with poisoning. There were limits on what

these groups could do. It is very different than that which can be

perpetrated by a State.

Let me conclude by saying that the possibility is remote of a

mass scale biological weapons attack. Small scale attacks, biocrimes, like we may see in Florida, are possible. The government

has the responsibility to do all that it can to prevent, protect and

respond to events that seem unlikely. The challenge is to determine

how much to prepare for a low probability, albeit potentially catastrophic attack, while at the same time guarding against not focusing enough on more probable events with significant but not necessarily catastrophic consequences.

With that, Mr. Chairman, let me conclude. And I will be glad to

answer any questions you or the members of the committee have.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much for your testimony and we will

have a number of questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Parachini follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Post, you can end this panel and then we will

start with the questions.

Dr. POST. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am honored to have the opportunity of addressing you on this important

topic. A great deal of attention has been paid to the vulnerability

of American society and what terrorists could do. I will be confining

my remarks to what terrorists would do and wouldn’t do, what

their motivations and incentives are and what their constraints are

for committing acts of the chem-bioterrorism. First, a note of vocabulary. There is a term often in use and I hope that this committee

can play a role in killing this term and that is, weapons of mass

destruction terrorism. It is an unfortunate term that is all too readily used. Certainly on September 11th, we saw mass destruction

terrorism, indeed catastrophic super terrorism perpetrated in the

guise of conventional terrorism.

Similarly, the so-called weapons of mass destruction, chem-bio,

radiological, nuclear, in fact, can be used with exquisite precision

to the point of being able to kill a single individual in an assassination. Let me first take the committee rather swiftly through the

spectrum of terrorism. I am going to attempt to both differentiate

the threat by group and by attack type. And these remarks are

elaborated in my prepared statement. You will see—— Mr. SHAYS. Now we have one in front of the table—you can’t see

it, but if we are looking down, don’t think we are not paying attention.

Dr. POST. First, across the top and differentiating, this is really

quite variegated spectrum of terrorist groups. We have crusaders,

criminals and crazies. Let me emphasize as a psychiatrist who has

been working and understanding terrorist psychology, terrorists

are not crazed psychotics despite the often misinterpretation of the

public. In fact, terrorist groups expel emotionally disturbed members from their groups. They are a security risk. At the middle tier,

I note in particular State-supported terrorism. As Mr. Parachini

stated a moment ago, this is of grave concern for the reasons he

indicated, in terms of the resources necessary, and I will come back

to that in a moment. I will be focusing on the motivations and constraints for the sub State groups.

First, across the left, we have social revolutionary terrorism. This

is the groups who were particularly prominent during the 70’s and

80’s, red brigades, Red Army faction in this country, the Weather

Underground following Marxist, Leninist doctrine. Still present,

though, we have Japanese Red Army, a number Colombian social

revolutionary groups as well. Right wing terrorism on the rise. In

fact, a number of the small attacks of chemical biological terrorism

have come from individual extremists within the right wing fringe.

Nationalist separatist terrorism refers to the groups seeking to

have an independent nation, be it the provisional Irish Republican

Army in Northern Ireland who have heard about the troubles from

their fathers and grandfathers in the publics of northern Ireland

or the radical Palestinian terrorists hearing of the lands taken

from their families in the coffee houses of Beirut in the occupied

territories.

Of particular concern is the group that I have labeled religious

extremist terrorism, both including new religions such as Aum

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Shinrikyo, which gave us the event which precipitated in many

ways the major concern with this, the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo

subways and religious extreme and religious fundamentalist terrorism. And of particular concern now, of course, Islamist radical extremist terrorism.

Now if we could have the second graphic, please. What I would

like to do now is walk you swiftly through this graphic. Down the

left I have the groups I have just mentioned. Across the top, I have

noted different types of attack. From my point of view, the major

psychological thresholds across is not the weapon type, but the

willingness to create mass casualties as was tragically demonstrated on September 11th. In fact, to echo Mr. Parachini, one

could cause mass casualties with conventional weapons as has been

done on a number of occasions going back to the Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

Mr. SHAYS. Just announcing that we are going into session at 11

a.m., you know, I say that but I am not necessarily right. I am still

confused by this. Am I right guys, are we going into session at 11

a.m., or is that a vote? We’ll figure it out later.

Dr. POST. I have also noted CBW hoax. I emphasize this because

this is insufficiently considered. One can have a very powerful— successful terrorist act without ever spreading a molecule of substance about—and we have insufficiently considered our preparation for this. And finally, small scale attacks, large scale attacks

and then the catastrophic attacks of which Mr. Parachini spoke.

Now for the first two types, social revolutionary and national separatist groups, they are interested in influencing the west calling attention to their cause. It would be quite counterproductive for them

to have either a mass casualty attack or an attack which damaged

their constituents.

It is possible but remote that they would choose to have a small

scale attack that doesn’t affect their constituents. Thus a Palestinian group might attack in Tel Aviv, but not in Jerusalem. For the

right wing groups, we see some groups who have indeed participated lacking though, in fact, the resource and technology. Let me

focus on the last two groups, the religious fundamentalist groups

and the new religion terrorist. Here, in my judgment, there is little

psychological constraint as has been demonstrated. Indeed, there is

a desire to cause extreme casualties. In fact, some of the terrorists

I have interviewed are quite interesting in saying there is no moral

red line in terms of the amount of destruction.

However, here we have, again, an issue where the resources necessary to carry this out are simply not present for the group. And

what would be a great hazard here would be if we had a State supporting these groups such as Iraq, which has been one of the areas

of concern. In my judgment, we need to be focusing our intelligence

resources in particular on the groups of greatest concern, which

would be those groups responsible for more than 40 percent of the

attacks in recent years where no responsibility has been claimed.

They are not interested in influencing the west. They are interested in expelling the west. They don’t need that New York Times

headline, God knows.

And this is the group of greatest concern. But even so, it is not

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ment, in terms of catastrophic attacks. There is a possibility of

focal attacks only. And we should not, in overreacting to this, neglect to focus on conventional terrorism because it is conventional

terrorism that continues to be the source of mass casualties and

continues to be the method of choice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Post follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. My staff is a little disappointed with you, Dr. Post,

because they were enjoying your testimony hoping you would read

it. You were talking about religious fundamentalist terrorism and

you say they were seeking to influence the west in the establishment. But in the past decades no responsibility’s claimed for upwards of 40 percent of terrorist acts. We believe this is because of

the increasing frequency of terrorist acts by radical religious extremist terrorists. They’re not trying to influence the west, rather,

the radical Islamic terrorists are trying to expel the secular modernizing west and they do not need their name identified in a New

York Times headline or in a story on CNN. They are ‘‘killing in the

name of God,’’ and don’t need official notice. After all, God knows.

Somehow my staff thought that was rather an ingenious statement. So it is on the record, OK, Larry. At this time, I will call on

Mr. Putnam.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the panel

for their outstanding opening remarks. My first question is for Dr.

Alibek. You have related the history of the Castro regime’s involvement in bioweapons development since the early 1980’s, including

a comment that you gave to the Miami Herald in 1999. As a Floridian, I am very concerned because Cuba has a hostile regime 90

miles off shore. What information do you have for us on the status

of the Cuban regime’s production of bioweapons?

Mr. ALIBEK. I think of this question because in 1999, it was quite

a confusing situation because when I gave that interview, the State

Department issued information saying that they had no information about any Cuban offensive biological weapons problem. But at

the same time, Defense Intelligence Agency included Cuba in a

group of countries involved in biological weapons activity. But my

personal opinion and my personal experience of this, we have some

information about this Cuban activity. We knew Cuba was interested in biological weapons research and development work. We

knew that there were several centers; one of them was located close

to Havana involved in, I would say, in military biological technology. And what was most amazing to us, we consider Cuba is not

a well-developed country. But at the same time, Cuba has a very

perfectly developed system of engineering and is capable to develop

genetic engineering agents. They’ve got the desire to develop genetically engineered biological weapons. In my opinion, I strongly

believe, and I still believe, this country discovered this capability

and what the size of this program and what the level of achievement, of course, it is up to our intelligence services.

Mr. PUTNAM. In the course of your work in the Soviet Union and

your contacts with some of the Soviet satellite States, was there

ever any motivation to develop biological or chemical weapons for

the purpose of destroying agricultural crops or agriterrorism as opposed to inflicting mass casualties?

Mr. ALIBEK. You are certainly right when you ask this question

because in the Soviet Union, for example, there was a huge program. And this program included several directions and one direction, for example, to develop biological weapons to infect and kill

human beings, troops and civilian population. Another was the program by the minister of agriculture.

Mr. SHAYS. Another problem or program?

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Mr. ALIBEK. Another program to develop anti-crop and anti-livestock biological weapons. And there were several institutions involved in this business. And they developed, for example, biological

weapons like rinderpest, African swine fever, foot in mouth disease,

specifically intended to infect livestock. There was another part of

this program to destroy crops, wheat, rye, rice and corn. Biological

weapons program, they are huge programs and they include many

different directions. And undoubt, agricultural weapons are usually

a part of large biological weapons programs.

Mr. PUTNAM. Is it safe to say that a number of the researchers

who were working on those agricultural programs have now spread

out through a number of other nations and regimes since the collapse of the Soviet Union?

Mr. ALIBEK. Yes, you’re right. Many of them are now overseas

and work for some other countries.

From my personal experience I know in the West, just in the

West, we’ve got tens to hundreds of scientists with quite sophisticated biological weapons knowledge. How many of them now in the

Middle East or some other countries, we have no idea. But there

was some information that some of them left for Iran, for Iraq and

for some other countries.

Mr. PUTNAM. Dr. Post, I have a very brief amount of time remaining and so much to ask.

From a psychological perspective is there a desire for a number

of these regimes to focus on agricultural terrorism, attacking food

safety scenarios, or are they more focused on the spectacle of an

explosion and bodies in the streets and casualties and things of

that sort?

Dr. POST. One has to differentiate among both the regimes and

the groups. For groups seeking to strike out and damage us, there

certainly could be a motivation to strike out in the agricultural

area. For groups seeking that terrorist spectacular, to have attention and notice paid to them, that would be much less likely just

because of the nature of the manner in which the threat has persisted. This is certainly an area of significant concern from my

point of view which has yet not been sufficiently addressed.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank the gentleman.

Mr. Allen, do you have a question?

I’m sorry. I would like to acknowledge that Mr. Allen is here and

Ms. Schakowsky and Mr. Clay.

Mr. ALLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you all for

being here today.

I was struck by some of the differences I detected in Mr. Decker’s

testimony and Dr. Alibek’s, so I would like to sort of push it back

to you. I thought I heard Mr. Decker saying—I hope I heard Mr.

Decker saying—that we need to go through a risk management

process. We need to evaluate all the different threats out there. I

thought the outline that you raised was a good one to look at a

threat assessment, a vulnerability assessment and a criticality assessment.

That’s not what we’ve been doing in this country, and I can’t help

but think that the whole debate over missile defense would continue to be very different—if we actually looked at the threat of an

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ICBM being fired at this country in the context of all the different

threats we face from states and from terrorist groups, we would approach it differently. And if it didn’t feel so much like a crusade

on the part of the advocates, those of us who are skeptics might

have reacted a little differently.

I thought I heard Dr. Alibek saying there really are thousands

of different biological agents out there that could be used.

The question that I’m interested in is how is it possible for us

as a government and as a country, two different things, to start to

do real risk management and bringing it to bear in this debate?

Here’s what I’m thinking: I think the GAO 2 years ago recommended that a threat and risk assessment be developed by the

FBI. The FBI said we would do it. I don’t know if it’s being done.

I would like Mr. Decker to respond to that, the status of the recommendations and so on.

But my overall question for any of you is, should we be asking

different agencies like the FBI or the CIA or the Department of Defense to do separate threat and risk assessments and then try to

get those separate assessments, kind of evaluate them, or do we

want these different agencies to set up a structure that will allow

them to do the threat and risk assessments together?

Because I think we are in trouble if we just let the media take

whatever threat is out there, whether it’s anthrax 1 day or some

other biological agent another day or whatever, if we keep moving

from crisis to crisis based on the latest story, we will not be doing

our job well. That’s a bit rambling. But what I’m looking for is

some advice on the approach we could take to get to a more disciplined analysis of the threats and vulnerabilities that are out

there.

Maybe, Mr. Decker, you should begin. I have taken too much

time. I apologize.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Thomas H. Allen follows:]

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Mr. DECKER. Sir, let me start with one piece of this. In kind of

looking at what Governor Ridge has to do, he’s leading an Office

on Homeland Security. We’re not sure what that homeland security

truly means. But if you read the Executive order, clearly it’s to

combat acts of terrorism. That’s pretty clear.

One aspect of working on a national strategy has to be an understanding of the threat. Understanding the threat and threat assessments are two slightly different issues.

One, the understanding of threat is something that is continuous,

it’s long term, it has hooks into the past, just like Mr. Parachini

mentioned, that allows you then to do a threat assessment which

I would make the analogy is more like a snapshot in time. It gives

you an appreciation for a lot of different factors that can be used

in a quantifiable way to make certain decisions.

Now, the issue that I would raise, sir, is there are agencies, organizations that are better prepared and better structured and based

on their mission to do threat assessments. I do think that the

threat assessments, that process in the intelligence community and

to a lesser degree with the law enforcement community, there is a

difference in approach and model.

But with the intelligence community they probably do good assessments at the national level, looking at specific issues, long-term

issues, and these are typically call national intelligence estimates.

These estimates, these assessments provide a road map, if you will,

on understanding an issue that I would submit other experts

should use when you do risk management.

Risk management basically is a discussion. It’s a conversation

with people of different disciplines, different backgrounds, different

perspectives, that are experts in an area to be able to make sense

out of what the threat implication is to our assets. And to make

sense out of that, you have to know a lot about yourself. What’s

vulnerable and has most important?

So, at the national level, you could have a threat assessment and

a real good one of everything that you know to date and then you

have to put that into context. How would it affect my

vulnerabilities? How does it exploit my weakness? What is most

important that I have to protect and at what degree? And that’s

where leadership comes in to make those hard decisions. What is

an acceptable level of risk once I consider all these factors?

Mr. ALLEN. So you’re talking about sorting out the large number

of risks that Dr. Alibek was referring to, for example?

Mr. DECKER. Yes.

Mr. ALIBEK. If I may, I’m not against a necessity that you do risk

assessment.

I am not against a necessity to do a risk assessment. But, you

know, I feel always a sort of resistance, reluctance when we discuss

a necessity to develop a sort of priority, what is more likely and

what is less likely and so on and so forth.

Let me give you a couple of examples. In the early 1980’s, before

I came to the United States, there was a work—I would call it risk

assessment work in the field of biological weapons. This work was

done by some intelligence services here in the United States, and

the recommendations was sent to the Department of Defense. And,

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cal weapons in the future would be bacterial biological weapons

and toxin biological weapons.

Resulting from this assessment, the entire division of the Institute of Medical Defense, medical research, was eliminated, division

which was responsible for protection against biological weapons in

1980’s. And for 10 years it didn’t exist.

After some people came from the East and said, OK, guys let’s

analyze what we are having here in this field, what was the result?

Yes, biological weapons would—the most effective biological weapons would be bacterial and viral biological weapons. Toxins in

terms of military deployment wouldn’t be very effective. It was the

result of many years study done in the Soviet Union and, unfortunately, in some other countries.

In this case, you can imagine this type of approach led to the entire destruction of the entire division and entire direction in biological weapons defense. If we use this approach, in my opinion, we— again, we’re going to make the same mistake we already made before in our history.

Mr. SHAYS. Could I just jump in, if the gentleman would yield,

even though his time has run out, I would like them all to go

through and answer your question. But I would just intuitively respond that maybe the assessment wasn’t done properly. And I

would also say that it would strike me that you have to update

your assessment every year. So that if you had updated your assessment every year, you might not have found the result that you

ended up with.

Mr. ALIBEK. Of course, the problem is this: My position when we

discuss biological threat and bioterrorism, you know, I am saying,

that’s right. There are many different agents would be used. There

are many techniques could be used. But it’s not a situation in

which we are not able to do a comprehensive analysis and to develop a new understanding, contemporary modern understanding of

biological weapon threat. It’s not something impossible. We can do

this. It’s only a problem in this case to find right professionals to

do this assessment.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Parachini and Mr. Post, you both want to respond to his question? Then I will go to Ms. Schakowsky.

Mr. PARACHINI. I was struck in Mr. Decker’s response by his emphasis as an important part of the threat assessment being intentions. And to underline your comments, Mr. Allen, you spoke about

some of the skepticism.

Let’s go back to the cold war. We tended in retrospect to overevaluate the threat from the Soviet Union because we were paying

too much attention to capability and insufficient attention to intention. In dealing with closed societies and closed groups and organizations such as al Qaeda, we are significantly impaired from making intelligence estimates of intention and therefore tend to go to

the worst-case scenario. This really emphasizes how crucial it is to

be able to get into the heads of our adversaries more effectively

than we have been at the present time.

Mr. SHAYS. The challenge with that, though, is intentions can

change from moment to moment but capability may be a little more

long term. So we could—it would strike me we could think we

know their intention but their intention could change overnight.

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Dr. POST. I don’t see it quite that way, that intentions change

from moment to moment. There is a linear track.

Now, having said that, certainly Osama bin Laden is a remarkably innovative leader. He has spoken in almost taunting fashion

about his willingness to use such weapons, which in itself is often

terrifying.

Mr. ALLEN. The only thing I would add to that in response is

that when you’re trying—it’s different, I think, trying to gauge the

intention of a terrorist group, which has a pretty clearly stated

mission in this case, as compared to a state, a country which isn’t

going to move anywhere. And part of the debate about missile defense and the question of intentions is the fact that missiles that

are launched can be traced right back to the site from which they

were launched. But I don’t mean to drag that whole debate into

this one.

Dr. POST. Just to elaborate on your point, though, the goal of no

state is to terrorize. They will use terrorism to support their foreign policy goals, but when it becomes counterproductive for the

state they are deterred just by the factors you illuminate.

When you have a group whose primary goal is in fact to create

terror in the service of coercion—and I think it should be remembered terrorism is at heart psychological warfare. It’s violence as

communication. It’s designed to accomplish goals through creating

terror, not through proliferation of bodies.

Mr. SHAYS. Ms. Schakowsky, you have been very patient. Thank

you very much. You have the floor.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you for

continuing what you started well before September 11th in looking

into these matters.

In that regard, I want to credit Representative Tierney for some

questions that he asked and wanted to ask today that—he is not

here right now. On June 5th and July 11th, this subcommittee held

hearings on the biological weapons convention; and this international treaty, which was signed in 1972, has 143 signatories prohibiting states from developing biological agents for offensive purposes. The problem that was acknowledged was that this treaty

contains no inspection provisions and relies on international political pressure to ensure that there is compliance. And, as you stated

in your recommendations, Dr. Alibek, that for many years the Soviet Union was able to hide an enormous biological weapons program. So, clearly, inspections is an issue.

The last administration developed a protocol that would establish

an inspection regime; and the current administration has, for unknown reasons, ‘‘concluded that the current version of the protocol

would be inefficient in stopping cheating.’’

At the July 10th hearing Mr. Tierney asked the administration

witness, Ambassador Mahley, if he had prepared an analysis of the

objections to this draft protocol which would require inspections.

He said he had. He said that he would provide it. There was a motion that was adopted in the subcommittee, and then there was a

request in writing.

Three months have passed, and so Mr. Tierney has asked that

the subcommittee take active measures, Mr. Chairman, to obtain

that report by Ambassador Mahley that was promised months ago.

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While we understand that these are very busy times for the administration, but it seems to me that just delivering a report that was

already done is a reasonable request. So I want to—— Mr. SHAYS. Would the gentlelady yield? It’s an absolutely reasonable request. We have requested it, and we’ll go back and ask that

it be provided.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, on behalf of Mr.

Tierney and myself as well.

I wanted to then ask the panel if it is your belief, considering

we’ve been talking about how you develop threat assessment, the

relationship of state programs and terrorist programs developing

biological weapons, whether or not this protocol requiring inspection would give us, in fact, another level of protection and if it’s

possible in your view to implement such a protocol effectively. Anyone who wishes to respond.

Mr. PARACHINI. I think part of the question is whether the protocol helps or hurts. And the intention is clearly to help, but it in

itself will not be sufficient. I think part of the problem of arms control in the post cold war period is that our expectations have been

very high. Yet it has been very difficult to pinpoint in a multilateral context the security problems that we face with an arms control tool. So the arms control tool will be useful but not sufficient.

My understanding of what Ambassador Mahley has said was

that the administration wants to think about this in a much broader way and not be locked into just seeing the BWC as the way to

address the problem, that there is a whole range of other tools such

as regulating more effectively commerce and infectious diseases.

We have some regulations in the United States, but on an international basis it’s an open market. Pathogens are traded around

the world without any of the normal controls.

Disease surveillance, something that the committee I know has

looked at several times, we’re getting a little better at it here in

the United States. But we’re in a global environment. Global surveillance in other parts of the world where emerging infectious diseases are appearing is not near at the level ours is, and most public health officials in the United States say ours is not adequate.

So these are very different tools other than arms control to address

this problem.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Is there a counterproposal to the protocol?

Mr. PARACHINI. That is part of the challenge that the administration is on the hook for, to provide that. These are not easy solutions, and it’s not easy to come up with a package of new things.

This is a totally new environment, and I commend the administration for trying to do some new thinking. Their challenge is to do

it in a speedy fashion.

Mr. ALIBEK. If I may, a small addition, in 1999, I was a part of

this process called a three-lateral agreement between the United

States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union to inspect or visit some

biological weapons facilities—or suspected of being biological weapons facilities. Now I know one of the biggest problems was to prove

whether or not one or another facility was actually—is it a BW facility or defense facility? It’s one of the problems.

But when we discuss a new protocol, I envision three major problems.

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First problem is this: Terrorist organizations, they don’t sign any

treaties. And for them, of course, it doesn’t matter what kind of

protocol we sign. It’s not going to affect their activity.

Second problem, we say, for example, one of the reasons a new

administration—— Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. To the extent they may use state-run facilities

to advance their agenda.

Mr. ALIBEK. Yes, that is right. But the problem is this when we

discuss biological weapons—you know, my biggest concern is this.

When people say biological weapons require many efforts, we

wouldn’t see any significant events. We use some examples cited,

Aum Shinrikyo—I feel a very significant resistance because we use

absolute incorrect examples.

The problem is this. When we use example of Aum Shinrikyo, nobody pays attention. But Aum Shinrikyo was not capable to get a

virulent strain. What they did, they used a non-virulent strain.

That’s why they were not able to get any casualties.

When we discuss about likelihood of—small likelihood of create

a significant terrorist attack, I completely disagree. I know the real

power of biological weapons, and I know what kind of results we

can get.

But you know when we discuss this treaty, one of the biggest

problems is this. For example, existing administration, current administration is saying we cannot put our pharmaceutical industry

in danger because it will let some inspectors come and see our production facilities and it would cause some significant harm. It’s incorrect.

As a biotechnologist, if I come to a new facility or any facility and

see some equipment, for example, to manufacture one or another

product, it says absolutely nothing to me. What I need to know, I

need to see specific documentation just to determine whether or not

I am able to get some information to use in my own country.

Mr. SHAYS. Could I interrupt the gentleman? You said such a

strong statement that no one else has concurred with you. You said

it provides you absolutely no information.

Let me just make my point. I wouldn’t suggest it tells you everything, but it tells you something. I have had more pharmaceutical

people tell me that the shape of the pipes, where the pipes—where

they connect and so on say a lot about the process that they use

to develop the particular pharmaceutical drug.

Mr. ALIBEK. That’s not true. First of all, all of technology

processes——

Mr. SHAYS. May I ask you a question? Were you on both sides

of this equation or on one side of the equation?

Mr. ALIBEK. On both. Because the problem is this. By technological processes, production facilities, they have quite similar

equipment. There are some differences in equipment design, some

computer programming to program production facilities. You could

see some equipment, for example, special equipment to purify one

product. But, you know, the—a major know-how is inside of these

columns, not outside.

Mr. SHAYS. I just want to move on. I’m not disagreeing with you

now. You said you’ve been on both sides and your statement will

stand on the record.

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Mr. ALIBEK. If I may, one more thing. When we include in this

protocol, a necessity to inspect, for example, suspected facilities,

having four member team and 2-week notice, in my opinion is a

mockery. Because for 2 weeks it’s possible to hide any BW production.

Mr. SHAYS. Could I just ask, is it possible to hide it in a day?

Mr. ALIBEK. In small production could be hidden very easily

within 1 to 2-week period.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. Clay, you’re on.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me also thank the witnesses for being here to share with us

their knowledge and experience.

The purpose of the hearing is among the highest priority that we

may have as a country. We have to examine the factors that should

be considered in assessing the risk of biological terrorism. Just

months ago the subject would have been as serious but would not

have had the urgency and the knowledge that this has to be addressed and acted upon post haste. September 11, 2001, changed

any perception that biological terrorism was only a possibility. It

is now a probability and, depending on the results of the investigation ongoing in Boca Raton, FL, it may be a reality. However, we

must not assume answers before the investigation is complete.

The threat is real. It will remain real for the foreseeable future.

The American people need both procedures and actions for the

knowledge of how to implement those procedures that are established.

Mr. Decker, you have repeatedly reported that we as a country

lack a comprehensive assessment of the terrorist threats against

us. The problem as you describe it is that, without this assessment,

we haven’t done a comparison and prioritization to allow us to plan

intelligently. Is that a correct description of your findings?

[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:]

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Mr. DECKER. Congressman Clay, that is correct.

Mr. CLAY. OK. And, as a result, there is a risk that our spending

and preparation may be misaligned, is that right?

Mr. DECKER. I would hope that our investment returns the most

interest for the Nation, and I’m not sure that’s the case without

that threat assessment.

Mr. SHAYS. Your answer was really a yes, right?

Mr. DECKER. Yes.

Mr. CLAY. You know, let’s talk about preparedness of the American public. I’ve heard that you can acquire a vaccine for anthrax.

Should there be a run on getting that vaccine by the American

public? Should we be concerned? And anyone on the panel can answer.

Mr. DECKER. I’d let my distinguished colleague, Dr. Alibek, comment on that.

Mr. CLAY. Should there be a run on the anthrax vaccine? Should

the American public start—— Mr. ALIBEK. Let’s imagine the situation. We’re able to manufacture enough doses of vaccine to vaccinate the entire population of

the United States. Theoretically, it’s possible, but it would be a significant problem, financial problem, logistical problem and so on

and so forth, a medical problem as well.

But, at the same time, let’s imagine the situation, as I said before, there are many different agents and you vaccinate just

against anthrax, it means somebody who has a desire to deploy biological weapons would use something else. Having people vaccinated against anthrax we would force these terrorist groups to

develop and to deploy something else—plague, tuberculosis, something else. When we talk about this, in my opinion it’s not a perfect

idea to vaccinate people because—keeping in mind that the number

of agents is quite large. Any time you vaccinate against one agent

you are in danger to be infected by another one.

Mr. CLAY. One more question, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. You have no problem.

Mr. CLAY. We agreed that numerous technical problems are

there with acquiring, producing and weaponizing biological agents.

Mr. Decker, you stated in a past report, ‘‘a leading expert told

us that the whole process entails risk. For example, anthrax powders easily adhere to rubber gloves and pose a handling problem.

Effectively disseminating the agent can pose technical challenges

in that proper equipment and energy sources are needed. A less sophisticated product in dissemination method can cause illness or

death.’’ As a result of these conclusions, would you say that terrorists or

rogue states are more likely to seek out legitimate covers for their

illegitimate activities such as pharmaceutical plants or the like?

Mr. DECKER. Sir, I have no direct evidence to be able to support

that, but it would seem likely.

Mr. CLAY. Likely that they would use these plants as covers?

Mr. DECKER. I can only state that it would seem logical, but I

have no factual documentation to support that.

Mr. CLAY. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank the gentleman.

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I haven’t done my round yet. I’m going to do 5 minutes, then another 5, then we’ll just go back to the other Members. I’d like to

go fairly quickly if I can. If we have agreement, so then we not discuss those things, only where there might be disagreement.

Mr. Decker has come forward with the whole concept that risk

management is a systematic and analytical process to consider the

likelihood that a threat will endanger an asset and so on. Then he

broke it down into three: threat assessment, vulnerability assessment and critical assessment. The bottom line to a threat assessment is a threat assessment is used to evaluate the likelihood of

a terrorist activity against a given asset or location. Then he basically said a vulnerability assessment is a process that identifies

weaknesses in fiscal structures and so on. Then he said a criticality

assessment is a process designed to systematically identify and

evaluate important assets and infrastructures in terms of various

factors such as the mission and so on.

Do any of you disagree with this as being a framework with

which the committee could work in dealing with management, risk

management? Does this make sense to you, Dr. Alibek; to you, Mr.

Parachini; to you, Dr. Post?

Mr. ALIBEK. In general, it makes sense.

Mr. PARACHINI. Just make sure I understand.

Mr. SHAYS. He’s giving us a way to process this. I want to know

if you are comfortable with it or whether you would amend it.

Mr. PARACHINI. An important part of this, if I understand what

has been proposed, is to factor in motives into the vulnerability assessment. I think that’s what Dr. Post has talked about. Too often,

we just focus on the vulnerability or we just focus on the criticality,

and we don’t think what the capabilities put together with motives

might produce. So that’s an important point.

Mr. SHAYS. OK, did you want to make a point Dr. Alibek?

Mr. ALIBEK. In my opinion, that is correct. But when we discuss

risk assessment, my position is still the same. We need to analyze

the entire problem and to see what all possible ways to deploy and

to develop biological weapons and what agents could be used. You

know, I would use a broader definition for risk assessment.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Well, I’m going to come right back to you in a

second.

Dr. Post, your issue on motivation, anything else?

Dr. POST. I would concur with what John Parachini has just said.

And to me this is the weakest aspect of our capability of conducting

a thorough risk assessment at this point, an insufficient ability to

have the data to make a good evaluation of intentions.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me expose my ignorance, Mr. Decker. I have basically said continually whenever I’ve had the opportunity that we’ve

had three commissions that have come before us. They said, we

don’t have a proper assessment of the terrorist threat, we don’t

have a strategy to deal with a threat, and we aren’t organized to

maximize our resources to be effective to implement the strategy

and succeed against the threat. Now, I’ve just made this blanket ‘‘we don’t have a proper assessment of a threat.’’ You’re breaking

that first one down into parts, correct?

Mr. DECKER. Not exactly, sir. What I’m saying is, threat assessment by itself is not enough——

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Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. DECKER [continuing]. To craft a cogent national strategy

with effective actions.

Mr. SHAYS. So we need more than threat assessment.

Mr. DECKER. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. So you have termed it risk management, and you

have divided it into these three things—the threat assessment, vulnerability assessment and criticality assessment.

You jumped in, Mr. Parachini, and said, motives go in there.

Where would motives go in those three or is it a separate identity?

Would it go under threat or would it go—it would go under threat,

I guess.

And you, Dr. Alibek, would take these three and add something

else to it. You spoke too general for me for it to be helpful.

Mr. ALIBEK. In my opinion, what needs to be said—not just

threat assessment. Threat assessment, defense assessment is very

important.

Mr. SHAYS. What, our capability to respond?

Mr. ALIBEK. Our capability to respond.

Mr. SHAYS. Help me out, Mr. Decker. Where would that go in

your line of thinking?

Mr. DECKER. The risk management approach is when you’re

looking at preparedness.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. DECKER. We’re really talking primarily about the defense,

the preparedness of the homeland.

Mr. SHAYS. We’re talking about the detection and prevention

part of it.

Mr. ALIBEK. Not just the detection and prevention. Of course,

prevention is very, very important. When we talk about defense assessment or our preparedness, we need to keep in mind three

major issues—detection, prevention and treatment.

Mr. SHAYS. What was the last word?

Mr. ALIBEK. Treatment.

Mr. SHAYS. Treatment?

Mr. ALIBEK. Treatment, yeah.

Mr. SHAYS. How you treat it. OK. My staff understands. Then

they make me feel ignorant here. That meant nothing to me. He

said it five times—treatment, treatment, treatment—but it doesn’t

help. What do you mean?

Mr. ALIBEK. The problem, one of the major things, biological

weapons cause infectious diseases. In terms of protection——

Mr. SHAYS. Do you mean response instead of treatment?

Mr. ALIBEK. No, when we discuss response, we need to keep in

mind three major directions in medical response. I would say—but

not general response. Detection is a technical response, then protection is a medical response, and medical and technical response

and treatment.

Mr. SHAYS. Oh, I see. I misunderstood. I was thinking you meant

detect the attack. You mean detect—so in that—I understand

treatment in that basis. You’re saying once there is the like—if

you’ve detected that someone has a pathogen, that they are—they

have been ill, you want to detect it, you want to protect them and

treat them.

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Mr. ALIBEK. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Now I understand. No wonder you thought I was

an idiot here.

I’m fascinated by your chart, Dr. Post. Because—let me just first

get it here—it seems to me you’re almost doing what the FBI has

done. I’m not being really fair to you, so you’ll get a chance to enlighten me. The FBI has said, there will be an attack, you know.

It’s like we needed to pay the FBI to tell us there will be an attack.

We all know there is going to be an attack. We all know it could

happen in the next 2 days. We all know it is serious, and we all

know it could happen weeks from now.

What you did on your scales—on your markings of the X and the

star, you basically—you have the check as being less constrained

and while still unlikely could rationalize such an act. So the check

does not indicate likelihood of committing such an act but refers to

motivation only. Well, that maybe answers my question.

You’re saying that these are not likely but that—help me out.

Dr. POST. I’m glad you picked up on that. Because I think the

check is somewhat misleading. This doesn’t mean they are likely

to do this. They are less psychologically and motivationally constrained. Having said that, they still need resource and technology.

And if they are succeeding abundantly with conventional terrorism

and don’t have the handling risk, there is really very little incentive to move forward.

The one major caveat in terms of that as I have studied Osama

bin Laden, I’ve regularly been struck by—I think we can reliably

predict we will be surprised by him. And he is remarkably innovative. Spends a great deal of time preparing, and then we have a

terrorist spectacular. So I am by no means confident he would not

move in this direction, not that he can’t cause mass casualties with

conventional terrorism but because he recognizes the terror that

such an act would inflict.

Mr. SHAYS. You want to say something, Mr. Parachini?

Mr. PARACHINI. Let me contrast with Dr. Post on this point. I

think there is a certain psychic thrill from the explosion or the dramatic event that a terrorist does not get in the delayed gratification

of making people sick with disease. And if there was a way that

bin Laden could think about to get that immediate response and

there was that immediate sense of fear it might be of greater interest to him, but there are other alternatives that he turns to that

he does achieve that.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, a mass exodus of a city because people think

there’s a biological or chemical attack would give him quite a thrill.

Because that would be pretty——

Dr. POST. I do agree with that. I don’t want to accuse you of

practicing without a license here——

Mr. SHAYS. You just did.

Dr. POST [continuing]. But I do think indeed that part of what

has been quite gratifying in his several interviews where he has actually suggested the questions about can bioterrorism has been

that this is a way of inflicting terror and the notion of terrorizing

the United States is a major source of satisfaction in his mission

to be commander in chief of the Islamic world against the West.

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Mr. PARACHINI. I think if you look at all those interviews it’s actually journalists who raise the question first and then he then responds to it.

Dr. POST. That’s actually not correct. That was my initial reaction. I’ve traced that back. The question—— Mr. SHAYS. This is based on interviews you’ve had with

different—— Dr. POST. No, no. These are CNN, ABC, CBS interviews.

Mr. SHAYS. Did I give you credit for something undeserved? My

understanding is that you have had contact and interviewed a

number of—— Dr. POST. We just completed a project interviewing 35 incarcerated Middle Eastern terrorists both in Palestinian and Israeli prisons and have a number of really quite dramatic quotes from them.

I also served as expert witness in New York in the Federal trial

of Osama bin Laden.

Mr. SHAYS. So this is something you have done a lot of research

on.

Dr. POST. Yes. But on your point I agree with you. There is a satisfaction to the big bang.

Having said that, it’s quite clear to me that a major motivation

for Osama bin Laden, as his last two statements indicated, is inflicting terror. And one gets a great deal—the mere act of doing

that in and of itself is sufficient. But that leads me to believe that

even a focal chem-bio attack which was then attributed to him

would be powerfully magnifying of his stature.

Mr. PARACHINI. Here is where Dr. Alibek makes a very helpful

point about treatment and protective measures. It is in our capacity to control the impact of a biological attack which is fundamentally different from a chemical attack where you would have an immediate response. Bin Laden has consistently moved ahead with

explosives. He has killed lots of people. The only people who—the

only subnational entities that have used biological agents have

been people who were obsessed with poisons.

And Aum, which is the one we fear the most because they are

like bin Laden, had lots of resources, failed in all their attempts,

including the case of anthrax where what they used was veterinarian vaccine anthrax. It was not a virulent agent. So this is not as

easy to do unless you’re possessed to try and do it.

Bin Laden is not possessed. He is an operator that we really

have to deal with.

Dr. POST. To add to that in one other point, several of the radical

Islamic terrorists we spoke to indicated that the Koran proscribes

the use of poison. And that was a disincentive. Most of the terrorists we interviewed said there was—they would do it if they were

ordered to do it, but in fact give me a good Kalashnikov and there

was no real consideration of this as a tactic among the radical Islamic terrorists that we had interviewed.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just say we’re going to get back to this whole

issue of treatment. Because I have had too many people—and not

right this minute, though, but because I want to give Mr. Gilman

a chance and Mrs. Schakowsky to come back.

But I just preface it by saying to you, so when I come to my next

round, that when I saw the attack on September 11th I almost

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physically fell to my knees in the horror of it, like all of us did. The

absolute horror of seeing the attack, to see the plane go on another,

to see the building just implode, to hear the explosion at the Pentagon. But I think I fell more to my knees because I’ve had so many

hearings where I’ve had people say to me, credible witnesses, that

they have the capability—pleasant sound—we have the capability.

And I thought they did, but the only restraint on them was they

wouldn’t want to have killed so many people. And that went—you

know, that just totally—it just flipped on that moment. They were

willing to annihilate 50,000 people.

So I understand your point that these weapons of biological and

chemical can be very precise so they can be—they can very much

be pinpointed and not a weapon of mass destruction. But they can

also be very indiscriminate.

Dr. POST. This is true. And your point about the willingness to

take mass casualties, one of the questions we asked in our interviews was was there any moral red line in terms of the extent of

destruction, the extent of casualties; and for several of the groups,

in fact, there are significant red lines that would be counterproductive for their cause.

Let me just read: The more an attack hurts the enemy, the more

important it is. That is the measure. The mass killings, especially

the suicide bombings, were the biggest threat, and so most efforts

were devoted to these. The extent of the damage and the number

of casualties are of primary importance. In a jihad, there are no red

lines.

I find that a rather chilling comment.

Mr. SHAYS. It is chilling.

Mr. Gilman.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. You’re going to have 10 minutes.

Mr. GILMAN. I’m impressed by Dr. Alibek’s focus of attention on

the fact that we don’t have a proper, appropriate coordination

amongst our agencies and recommends a single specialized agency

to take over. I note that we have organizations with some responsibility in our government. DOD, Defense, Health and Human

Services, Centers for Disease Control, Department of Commerce,

Department of Justice, FBI, CIA, NSA and FEMA, all have some

responsibility. But there is no coordination, as we found in other

areas that we’re addressing.

I think his recommendation that there should be an agency focused solely on biological terrorism, biological defense is a meritorious one, and I’d like to pursue it, but I’d like our other panelists

to give us their views on Dr. Alibek’s proposal. Mr. Decker.

Mr. DECKER. Congressman Gilman, this is the—I think Dr.

Alibek’s proposal is analogous to some of the comments from the

Hart-Rudman Commission when they talk about consolidating certain functions under one organization to deal with border security

issues. And the analogy would be obviously dealing with bioissues

or——

Mr. GILMAN. Do you support the proposal?

Mr. DECKER. Sir, our agency has not done enough work in this

area to determine is it better for the country to have an apparatus

like this versus improving what we currently have.

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Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Parachini.

Mr. PARACHINI. This is sort of a novel concept. It’s the sort of

thing one expects from Dr. Alibek, sort of new thinking. You know,

Governor Ridge could take this challenge on, among others.

Mr. GILMAN. Ridge is going to have a myriad of responsibilities.

But Mr. Alibek is recommending that there be one specialized

agency. What is your feeling? Yes or no.

Mr. PARACHINI. It might be too narrow of a task. There are already a number of entities within the Pentagon that work on biological defense and critically DARPA does a lot of the research that

Dr. Alibek is pointing to. So I would be reluctant to create yet another government agency to address this problem when I think already within the Pentagon there is a fairly robust agency.

Mr. GILMAN. Well, besides the Pentagon, all of those other agencies I just recited that have some part of it—HHS, DOC, DOJ, CIA,

FBI and NSA, FEMA—it seems to me you need some centralized

authority.

Mr. PARACHINI. There is a natural inclination to find a central

organization to coordinate. If we can accomplish integration without necessarily overlaying another layer of—— Mr. GILMAN. How do you get integration with all of these agencies out there?

Mr. PARACHINI. Some of the interagency processes I think function very well. It’s a matter of leadership to task them in the right

way.

Mr. GILMAN. How do you feel, Mr. Post?

Dr. POST. Having an intelligence background, having sat in on

many national intelligence meetings, I would think that something

would be lost in having too much of a homogenization of functions.

There is a utility to having different organizations, and often it

would be a greater clarity emerges from the clash of ideas.

Mr. GILMAN. So I take it the consensus is you have some reservations about pursuing it.

Dr. Alibek.

Mr. ALIBEK. If I may, to clarify this idea. You know, I am dealing

with many agencies. I talk to many experts from different agencies

and departments. The problem is this. I didn’t mean to—just to

have an agency just to conduct this work. It’s a completely different

idea. The idea, because as I said before the problem of biological

weapon threat and biological weapons defense is so comprehensive,

is so complex, it’s absolutely impossible to have a huge number of

agencies or departments responsible for different pieces of this

huge puzzle.

And when we start collecting all these pieces of puzzle in sort of

picture what we see now, we see a lot of duplication, I mean, just

many agencies doing the same work. Many government contractors, they do absolutely the same projects. We see a huge number

of absolutely the same efforts run by different agencies and departments. And, you know, when you start collecting you realize we

have a lot of work under different leadership, under different agencies, same work. While at the same time you can see a lot of holes

in this puzzle of biological weapon threat analysis and defense.

Mr. GILMAN. Dr. Alibek, let me interrupt you. Dr. Alibek, you

were the head of an agency in the Soviet Union that concentrated

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all of the efforts on biological and chemical warfare in your agency,

is that correct?

Mr. ALIBEK. Yes, that’s absolutely correct.

Mr. SHAYS. Would the gentleman suspend a second? Does it also

include defense as well as offensive?

Mr. ALIBEK. It includes both offensive and defensive issues. Just

my personal experience, I don’t want a supercentralization, I would

say, but you know when you’ve got an agency, it’s not a superagency which is capable to do everything and to remove people and

so on and so forth—but when you’ve got an agency which is controlling all situation—the entire situation in this field, when it knows

what kind of agency involved in what kind of work, what subcontractors are doing what kind of work—now, for example, I can

say again you mentioned specific agencies. I see, for example, there

is an entity, a large government contractor running the project who

develop so-called encyclopedia of biological weapons. We might be

in a senseless work. We spent millions of dollars to do this. But at

the same time there is another agency running another project

with similar tasks.

Mr. GILMAN. A lot of overlap.

Mr. ALIBEK. Not just overlap. A lot of senseless work. A lot of overlap. In this case, of course, when we say about $240 or $300

million in this field, just if you start analyzing all this puzzle, you

would see that 50 percent of this money is overlapping each other.

Mr. GILMAN. In your agency in the Soviet Union you had over

30,000 workers all concentrating on biological and chemical warfare.

Mr. ALIBEK. 30,000 workers, about 40 facilities concentrated

there both biological weapons research, biological weapon development, biological weapon production, biological weapons defense.

Mr. GILMAN. How long did that agency exist in the Soviet Union?

Mr. ALIBEK. It existed from 1973 to 1992. But now a similar

agency exists under the Minister of Defense. It’s similar agency but

dealing with military issues of biological weapons and biological

weapons defense. But it’s a military agency.

Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Chairman, I hope that we can take another

look at all of this since you were so forceful in your leadership on

the fractionalization with other authorities with regard to terrorism and other aspects of chemical warfare.

Let me ask the panelists, how do we force all of our agencies to

share information? For example, you told us that there was a lack

of sharing of intelligence between the FBI and the INS with regard

to the hostage plane, that one of the hostage planes had taken

place and had there been a sharing it could have been prevented.

What are your thoughts? How do we improve the sharing of intelligence?

Dr. POST. It seems to me, if I might note, that one of the better

outcomes of this tragic event was cooperation on two levels which

has been deficient in the past, both within the U.S. Government

among agencies where there really is a significant press now to

fully cooperate and share information and, at least as importantly,

among the international community. One simply cannot assess this

problem independently, either in any agency within the government or the United States alone without active sharing of informaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:06 Oct 28, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00079 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\81782.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tion. And I think we are moving—there has been a kind of quantum leap as I have come to understand that cooperation.

Mr. GILMAN. Any mandates necessary domestically to do that?

Should we have some mandate that there be forceful sharing of intelligence in—— Dr. POST. There are, of course, problems with the different perspectives of the agencies which will always be present—having an

informant versus having a witness, is this a crime or is this a developing information. Understanding—I have been regularly been

struck at interagency meetings between Defense, CIA and FBI that

one has three different perspectives coming to bear. Terrorism is

crime. Terrorism is political action. Terrorism is a low-intensity

conflict.

But the issue you’re drawing attention to is absolutely crucial,

and any efforts that can be brought to improve that cooperation I

think would be welcome.

Mr. GILMAN. Dr. Alibek, if reports are correct that the Soviet

Union used the biological weapon Glanders against the Mujahadin

in 1982, what is the likelihood that terrorist groups from Afghanistan would use those kind of weapons against their adversaries?

Mr. ALIBEK. Yes, you are absolutely right. There was credible information about the use of Glanders in 1992 against Mujahadins

in some remote locations of Afghanistan. Glanders is a bacterial infection, very easy to grow, very easy to concentrate. If not treated,

it has up to 30 percent mortality rate. Very stable in aerosol and

has some persistent forms.

In this case, just when we talk about difficulties, in my opinion,

it’s not difficult. Likelihood I would say is high.

Mr. GILMAN. Glanders is a—they tell me that is a bacteria that’s

highly lethal, is that correct?

Mr. ALIBEK. It’s not highly lethal. I would call it incapacitating

agent. If it stayed well we would have about a 5 percent mortality

rate. Without treatment, it would increase up to 30 percent.

Mr. GILMAN. Has any——

Mr. SHAYS. If the gentleman—it has gone about 12 or 13 minutes.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you, do you gentleman have until 12:30?

Does anybody have a problem until 12:30? I’m going to quickly vote

while Ms. Schakowsky—I’m going to let her recess. I’m going to let

her recess in the meantime.

I hope to be back shortly after we recess. Then we’ll get right— started again. Is that all right?

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY [presiding]. I just have a couple of questions.

It seems to me as if Dr. Alibek says one of the goals of biological

weapons is to incite panic and fear. In some degree that has already been accomplished, that there is an incredible preoccupation

right now with biological terrorism and emphasized, I think, with

the three cases of anthrax right now in Florida. But it has also focused attention on the public health infrastructure. And I apologize

for being here. I have looked through the testimony, and I know

you were talking about threat, but if you were to prioritize where

we are now putting our emphasis in response, both to prepare

against and to be ready should something happen, where would

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you put the priority of bolstering our public health infrastructure,

the capacity to recognize a biological attack, to have the necessary

vaccines, to have the communication systems that we need?

We have heard about weaknesses on every level. In comparison,

then, to the threat, how important is it to act now to address the

public health infrastructure? Anyone can answer.

Mr. PARACHINI. The value of your question is it points to opportunities for what I would call dual-use spending. There are things

that we can do that improve our capabilities and our public health

system to, for example, detect emerging infectious diseases that

occur naturally that are not intentional. And as a by-product of

that, we also include our capability to—the low probability of an intentional use of a biological agent.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. So in comparison, though, for example, in

terms of airline safety, other transportation modes, where would

you put—— Mr. PARACHINI. Now you are broadening the spectrum beyond

just within the biological area.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. However you want to frame it. But how important is it?

Mr. PARACHINI. Well, I would want to make investments that we

get dual-use benefit across the board. Specialized investments just

to address that terrorist problem or that terrorist problem today

will be outdated tomorrow. And I am not fully in agreement that

the only role of biological weapons is to inflict terror. And indeed,

in 1984, in the United States, the use of biological agents was not

to terrorize, but was specifically to incapacitate people.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Oh, no. I’m just saying if that is one of the

goals that—in part that has been achieved already.

Mr. PARACHINI. If that is one of the goals, we would have to have

somebody say that is what they intended to do, or we would have

to get a defector, or we would have to have somebody on a witness

stand say that. And while we think that, we actually have not had

a terrorist or a defector talk about biological weapons for terror.

We have them talk about them as effective killing weapons or effective incapacitating weapons. But when we are talking about biological weapons for terror, we are really projecting our fear into

what we think they’re thinking. It’s not clear to me that’s the case.

Mr. ALIBEK. If I may, when the Soviet Union was developing biological weapons, the Soviet Union developed its own doctrine and

classification of biological weapons. Biological weapons have been

divided into so-called strategic biological weapons, operational biological weapons, and the major idea was to kill as many as possible

people. Biological weapons, according to the Soviet Union’s military

doctrine, would be used to kill people. The United States’ old—very

old program existed in the 1950’s and 1960’s, intended to use incapacitating biological weapons.

But what was important for the Soviet military strategists, everybody understood that in case of deploying biological weapons,

one of the biggest problems would be in the country of deployment.

It is huge panic, full distraction of any activity, vital military activity, because people actually, in addition to being infected, diseased

and killed, they are afraid of biological weapons because they don’t

understand what it is. And it is one of the biggest problems.

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Another I think we are going to need to keep in mind, when we

talk about biological weapons—and you know what worries me?

When we discuss what kind of event we could see and whether or

not we would see a sort of a small event like we saw several days

ago in Florida, or it could result in some significant casualty number, the problem is this, and just what I would like to repeat once

again: There is no single answer. We cannot say—we cannot insist

saying biological weapons cannot produce a significant casualty effect. We cannot say at the same time—we cannot say biological

weapons are so effective that we could see a second doomsday, for

example, and to produce sort of a doomsday scenario.

In my opinion, what we need to do—that is why I said about our

lack of understanding of the biological weapon threat. We need to

understand it. Depending upon many different scenarios, agents,

techniques, concentration of the agent, amount of the agent deployed and so on and so forth, we could see from dozens to hundreds of thousands of casualties.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I am going to have to go vote, and I am going

to recess the committee right now.

[Recess.]

Mr. SHAYS [presiding]. Mr. Alibek thinks he has until 12:30 to

get back. Sometimes wars get started by miscommunication, but

we can deal with it on our own. Calling this hearing to order.

You all have been informed of a CNN story that an employee of

NBC in New York has tested positive for anthrax, and that was

Friday. The FBI and CDC are investigating. Now, then, they got

the story wrong, because they said the anthrax is not the same respiratory anthrax that killed a Florida man. The employee tested

positive for cutaneous anthrax. In other words, it is still the same

anthrax, it is just by skin rather than by air. What is your reaction, Dr. Post, concern?

Dr. POST. Each time we hear one of these events, it regularly

heightens our own suspiciousness, and there is a kind of hyperactive community now. But I must say that it is troubling, and I

would like to learn more about that, but especially when it hits a

news agency, what could that mean?

Mr. SHAYS. They make a mistake if they take on the news industry; don’t you think?

Dr. POST. There is no limit to whom they will take on.

Mr. SHAYS. Why don’t I go to you, Mr. Parachini. What I was

going to say to you, as I have said, based on the 20 plus hearings

we have had and the briefings we have had, I say the following:

That it is not a question if there will be a chemical or biological

attack, and it’s a question of when, where and what magnitude.

And I qualify the magnitude to be the less likely is the 100-year

storm. Do you find that a statement you can agree with or disagree?

Mr. PARACHINI. I agree with that. I think you are characterizing

the scope and magnitude of the problem in the right way.

Dr. POST. And motivationally, the issue of the 100-year storm for

almost all terrorist groups would be highly counterproductive and

have no positive incentive.

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Mr. SHAYS. Well, I used to think that before, but why now? I

used to think that before, but not anymore. I mean, I don’t see

based on your comment about the red line——

Dr. POST. I said for almost all terrorist groups, the one exception

being the Islamist radical extremists who see themselves as trying

to strike a mortal blow at our structure. Having said that, they are

doing quite well, thank you very much, on using conventional terrorism. And on their own—and I don’t have access to classified intelligence on this matter. The technological, scientific resource matters that are necessary really would require cooperation of a state

provision, such as Iraq, and that to me is a very important area

to be zeroing in on human intelligence on the connections between

Iraq and the bin Laden group.

Mr. SHAYS. Do you have any comment on that? Is that an uncomfortable statement to have made?

Mr. DECKER. I don’t think it is uncomfortable. With what we just

experienced, I think it is accurate.

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Post, you had said weapons of mass destruction

is not a helpful term because they can be used not as weapons of

mass destruction, or they wouldn’t most likely——

Dr. POST. The so-called weapons of mass destruction can be used

in small attacks, and you can cause mass destruction with conventional terrorism. So I think it is semantically confusing.

Mr. SHAYS. You don’t see a distinction between a chemical,

biological——

Dr. POST. That is CBRN terrorism, and it does have its own terrorizing aspects, the so-called silent death, but it is not useful—because it conjures up the spectacle of the superterrorism, and, in

fact, the much more likely use would be a small local attack.

Mr. SHAYS. I was born in 1945, 8 years old by 1953. We then

started to—we had the cold war—excuse me, the conventional

World War I, II concept of confrontation gave way to the cold war,

and there was a whole redefinition of how we responded. We ended

up with—I am going to put a reward out for Dr. Alibek. And anybody gets him gets $10 from me if you get him in the next 5 minutes, and that is a promise you can bank on. But the cold war

began. And we then—I am trying to think of, you know, is there

some parallels to then and now. I had people tell me they thought

cities would literally be blown up. I lived in a community in Fairfield County—Jason, you get $10.

I want to get you on your way, but I just wanted to say and I

am going to ask you, Dr. Alibek, this question. It can be a yes, if

it is a yes or no. I just say that it is not a question if there is going

to be a chemical or biological attack, but a question of not if, but

when, where and of what magnitude, and the magnitude is the

thing we talked about most likely to be small in nature, not large

in nature. Is that an uncomfortable statement, a statement you

would agree with or disagree?

Mr. ALIBEK. I would answer this way now——

Mr. SHAYS. I want a yes or no first. Would you agree or disagree.

If you don’t agree, tell me.

Mr. ALIBEK. I agree.

Mr. SHAYS. Now qualify.

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Mr. ALIBEK. Of course, we will be seeing newer and newer cases

of anthrax or some other infections. And we know, for example, today’s case in New York, new information has come in about a new

case of anthrax. But we will be going from small cases, and probably later we will be seeing a bigger number of cases of various infections.

Mr. SHAYS. And all of the three of you agree with Dr. Post except

as not surprising there is no red line anymore, no red line meaning

no limit to what they would be willing to do.

Mr. ALIBEK. In my opinion, there is no red line.

Mr. SHAYS. You are not surprised by it?

Mr. PARACHINI. Well, I guess I would want to texture that a little

more, because I think that the motivations, for example, are more

than just an audience of one and it being God. It is not just religion. There is a patina of religion here, but it’s other things. They

talk about political things. And indeed, bin Laden in his recent

statement has done that, as did Ramzi Yousef on the stand in New

York.

Here’s the part where I think it differs a little bit from there

being no red lines. They see themselves as cosmic warriors engaged

in a great struggle, and in order to continue that struggle which

gives them meaning, they have to stay alive, or some of them have

to stay alive. And so they are willing to do a lot, but it is not that

there is no red line, it’s that they’re willing to do what it is to fight

in this cosmic struggle.

Mr. SHAYS. In fact, the red line is way off in the distance.

Mr. PARACHINI. I don’t think they think about a red line at all.

And so by putting a red line out there, we are imposing how we

think that they’d crash on through it.

Mr. SHAYS. In a sense you said yes, and it’s an interesting way

of qualifying. You said you wanted to add texture to it. I’m learning

every day from you guys. I know my colleague Mr. Platts wants to

ask a question.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have two questions, and as a nonscientist kind of lay person on these issues trying to get a good understanding of the threats and the various aspects of these various biological weapons—the potential for it, earlier this week I sat in on a briefing with a doctor from John Hopkins and their civilian biodefense center, and when he talked about

smallpox and the threats of that being used by terrorists and it

spreading, one of the things he said was that a good nature—and

the symptoms, I think, was 2 days of very intense fevers followed

by the onset of the rash, and that his statement to us was that a

person is not contagious until the onset of the rash. And, Dr.

Alibek, in your testimony, you talk about it being contagious before

any symptoms are visible. And I’d be interested if you could expand

it.

Mr. ALIBEK. You know, it’s one of the biggest disagreements between Dr. Henderson and myself. He considers smallpox becomes

contagious when we see the onset of this infection. Unfortunately,

we have seen many cases when monkeys became infectious on the

last day of incubation period, and it was absolutely the same observation from the scientists who visited India and some other countries when they dealt with smallpox in those countries. This infecVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:06 Oct 28, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00084 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\81782.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tion becomes contagious the day before the onset of these symptoms.

Mr. PLATTS. That is based on your studies in Russia?

Mr. ALIBEK. Based on all observations and based on new study.

Mr. PLATTS. Well, I think that is an important aspect because

of——

Mr. ALIBEK. This is the only contagious infection in which people

become contagious before the onset of symptoms.

Mr. PLATTS. OK. Thank you.

From how to be able to address it, it emphasizes the importance

of an immediate response as opposed to having a day or 2 or 3

days’ kind of cushion to be able to respond.

Mr. ALIBEK. You know, it is an interesting question, for example,

when we analyze all scientific literature here in the United States

regarding smallpox, you know what kind of information you find?

You know, a very small general description of smallpox. Russia has

studied smallpox for years from various aspects, especially keeping

in mind that Russia, the Soviet Union, was involved in developing

smallpox biological weapons for decades. In this case, a number of

cases, a number of observations was much greater than here in the

United States. And, you know, it is in many Russian sources. For

example, if you analyze Russian sources, you can find this specific

statement: Infection, this infection becomes contagious before the

onset of symptoms.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you.

Second question was for any of the panelist members who would

like to address it is what other aspects of Dr. Henderson’s testimony was the difficulty—and it has been reported in the press of

it being very difficult to take a crop-dusting plane and adjust it to

have such a fine mist that would be the serious threat. He contended in his statements to us that it is not true, that it would be

very easy to kind of retrofit, to basically change some valves to

make the crop-dusting plane very much a means of disbursing the

biological element in a very effective way, and I had been interested in any opinions.

Dr. POST. It is my understanding that one needs to make a distinction between an urban area and tall buildings, and in order to

get the adequate concentration down, it would be quite problematic.

I do want to raise what my initial reaction was to this just to

add a totally different element. I found it very interesting that

these inquiries occurred in a rather indiscrete fashion, in fact just

before the event when they were going to give their lives. My initial question was, was this done, in fact, to create terror,

knowing—— Mr. PLATTS. Psychological aspect of it?

Dr. POST [continuing]. That they would be discovered, and was

this part of a larger plan? I just raise this as an additional thought.

Mr. ALIBEK. What is interesting, I agree with Dr. Henderson,

when somebody says it is very difficult just to redevelop nozzles of

crop dusters and just to have the right particle size, you know, in

my opinion, it’s incorrect. When we water the grass at our houses,

there are some systems just to create mist. It is a very simple nozzle system. When we say it is very difficult to have biological

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agents in the right particle, it’s a matter of just a specific nozzle

device. And in this case, if this—usually crop dusters deploy biopesticides or pesticides—a regular particle size. Settling was in between 50, 100 microns. When we talk about biological weapons deployment, this particle size must be between 1 to 25 microns. Some

people say 1 to 5. It’s incorrect. Up to 25 microns could work. It

would cause different manifestations of infections. But 25 microns

work as well.

And in this case, what I would like to say, one of the types of

deployment in the Soviet Union for operation of biological weapons

was to use medium-range bombers with spray tanks. In each spray

tank, to capacity each, it had specially developed nozzles just to

create this means. And, you know, crop dusters operate on the

same principle.

Mr. PLATTS. You are saying that you are agreeing with Dr. Henderson that it would be easily done?

Mr. ALIBEK. He said it would be easy, and I agree it is not a

technically unsolvable problem.

Mr. PARACHINI. If I can just add, the Iraqis worked on this for

a number of years and were not successful. We have to look into

the future and hedge against that possibility, but let us keep in

perspective the difficulty here.

Mr. ALIBEK. We worked on this problem, and we used anthrax

over the Virginia Islands using these medium-range bombers, and

the effectiveness of this deployment was unbelievable. And in 1968,

deployment of tuleremia of—by American military showed with the

right particle size was able to travel tens of miles and infect and

kill monkeys 40, 50 miles downwind.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And again, my thanks to

all the panelists for their testimony.

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Decker, a housekeeping issue here. If we are trying to assess the threat assessment, part of that is do they have

the capability, say, of delivering a chemical or biological agent.

That would be part of the threat assessment, right?

Mr. DECKER. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. Or a threat assessment, for instance, of radioactive

material would be do they have radioactive material; or nuclear

weapons, do they have a nuclear weapon?

Mr. DECKER. And other aspects of that, that’s correct.

Dr. POST. If I might add something worth noting in terms of

threat assessment, one would like to know—and this is a human

intelligence question—has this group been recruiting biochemists,

or has it been recruiting inorganic chemists. Has it been trying to

get into its cadre of specialists the kinds of scientists who could

promote this. This would be one of the kinds of indicators one

would look for that a group is making a transition from conventional terrorism to being really motivated to pursue bioterrorism.

Mr. SHAYS. In a briefing we had yesterday, we had Eileen Pricer,

who argues that we don’t have the data we need because we don’t

take all the public data that is available and mix it with the security data. And just taking public data, using, you know, computer

systems that are high-speed and able to digest, you know, literally

floors’ worth of material, she can take relationships that are seven

times removed, seven units removed, and when she does that, she

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ends up with relationships to the bin Laden group where she sees

the purchase of chemicals, the sending of students to universities.

You wouldn’t see it if you isolated it there, but if that unit is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, you then see the relationship. So we don’t know

ultimately the authenticity of how she does it, but when she does

it, she comes up with the kind of answer that you have just asked,

which is a little unsettling.

I just have a few areas of interest here, but I want to—my staff

wants to make sure that I ask one question, and I am going to keep

them on edge and wait to ask that question later. Makes them pay

attention.

Forty offices, 30,000 employees—30,000 employees would fill up

a stadium. That is a lot of people.

Mr. ALIBEK. Correct.

Mr. SHAYS. They were all working on biological weapons and defensive ways to defend?

Mr. ALIBEK. The great majority of them were working in two

fields, biological weapons offensive issues and biological weapons

defensive issues.

Mr. SHAYS. And defensive, in your words, are what would

happen—— Mr. ALIBEK. To development of treatment, of vaccines, and just

to protect against biological infectious diseases.

Mr. SHAYS. In the process of doing your work, were there occasions where people became inflicted with a particular disease and

died?

Mr. ALIBEK. Yes. We had some cases.

Mr. SHAYS. You had casualties.

Mr. ALIBEK. But you know what we were able to do because

there were two major systems to develop biological weapons. Minister of Defense had a great number of people who died because

they started this program in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

Mr. SHAYS. When your unit was established after the Department of Defense, were you the civilian side of this?

Mr. ALIBEK. We were a completely new entity, specifically established to develop modern, sophisticated biological weapons.

Mr. SHAYS. This is a matter of public record, and I should know

it, so I don’t want to spend a lot of time, but it’s going to get me

to a question. Is this operation still going on?

Mr. ALIBEK. The Minister of Defense is still having facilities, but

this system, Biopreparat, has been dismantled.

Mr. SHAYS. You have 30,000 people give or take.

Mr. ALIBEK. Many of them have left Biopreparat facilities. And

where these people are, it is very difficult to say.

Mr. SHAYS. We are not talking about 100 people, but 30,000.

Mr. ALIBEK. But at least people with sophisticated knowledge, a

number is about 7,000 to 9,000 people.

Mr. SHAYS. That is a staggering number.

Mr. ALIBEK. Nobody knows where these people are.

Mr. SHAYS. Now, in terms of the biological agents, did you come

across some delivery systems that would be very helpful to the terrorists, or did you hit a wall where you just simply couldn’t deliver

a biological agent effectively?

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Mr. ALIBEK. No. Everything was developed. There are three

major delivery systems for deployment because it was a military

program.

Mr. SHAYS. I don’t need to know them. I just want to know if you

did them.

Mr. ALIBEK. We were able to develop very effective, sophisticated

deployment techniques and means for deployment.

Mr. SHAYS. Now, some—obviously, if they are military, the tip of

a missile, that’s one thing, but were some of them more subtle so

they would be a means that would be a tool that a terrorist could

use?

Mr. ALIBEK. Some of them, at least 50 percent of this technique,

could be used by terrorists.

Mr. SHAYS. Give me on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being confident that

terrorists have these weapons to 1 that they don’t. Where would

you put it, 10 being most likely that they had them, or at least the

states—let’s just go to the states, the Koreas, the Chinas, the

Irans, the Iraqs, the Libyas.

Mr. ALIBEK. Nine, ten.

Mr. SHAYS. So, then, all I have to decide is if I think those countries have them, it’s possible the terrorists have them. And I know

what I think.

Mr. ALIBEK. I’m talking about the countries. If you are talking

about terrorist groups, it is difficult to say.

Mr. SHAYS. We will all come to our conclusion.

Dr. POST. On that question, might I note, though, the observation

was made, terrorists are mobile and hard to trace where states are

confined within their borders. The risk to a state of retaliation for

it being discovered that it was providing these weapons to a terrorist group is certainly profound, and that will be a major—I am not

saying it will stop providing them, but it certainly is a major disincentive for any state.

Mr. SHAYS. The only problem with Afghanistan, for instance, if

you believe the story yesterday, I mean, the Taliban and bin Laden

are basically one and the same, if you accept that. This is—my

major other area of questioning and I will get to the question the

staff wants me to ask—well, let me do it now, the BWC, Biological

Weapons Convention, did not stop the Soviet Union from developing biological weapons. The Soviets signed the BWC; is that correct?

Mr. ALIBEK. That’s correct. It was signed by the Soviet Union,

but it didn’t stop. It even expanded the Soviet Union’s biological

weapons program.

Mr. SHAYS. And I don’t believe, but I would be curious, do you

think there is a way you can write a protocol to inspect all potential places where you would make a biological agent, or do you

think that you could still have secret places that no one would ever

know about?

Mr. ALIBEK. In my opinion, it is impossible.

Mr. SHAYS. Impossible?

Mr. ALIBEK. Impossible, because these protocols would never be

able to inspect all possible locations and all possible

productionsites.

Mr. SHAYS. And on a timely basis.

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Mr. ALIBEK. It is not just this issue. For example, the Soviet

Union, as soon as that country started understanding that United

States will be pressuring the Soviet Union severely, they started

developing mobile installations for manufacturing and assembling

biological weapons.

Mr. SHAYS. Then let me just ask this question here. Do you think

that the smallpox is still a Vector or—let me put it this way. This

is what I have to sort out, and all of you can jump in. You basically

had smallpox theoretically that was the WHO—that is the United

States plus the Soviet Union—just those two and the WHO. But

you have the United States theoretically and the Soviet Union have

it, CDC and Vector. I don’t know why other doctors who were dealing with the smallpox efforts to cure it, why they wouldn’t have

theoretically all abided by the request to destroy it. But my question to you is, are you totally and completely comfortable that

smallpox is contained within Vector and nowhere else?

Mr. ALIBEK. Absolutely not. I strongly believe that there are

some countries who have secret stocks of this virus. And specifically we knew North Korea was experimenting with smallpox in

late 1980’s, early 1990’s. And we knew that Iraq was experimenting with camelpox as a good surrogate for——

Mr. SHAYS. You said Iraq?

Mr. ALIBEK. Camelpox is a good surrogate to model a smallpox

infection. This is just what we know for sure. But in my opinion,

there could be some other countries still having smallpox stocks.

Mr. SHAYS. Which gets me to this question—and all of you could

jump in as well in terms of your perspective on it—if I am asked,

you know, by someone from the press or constituents what can

they do—in other words, I know what the government can do to

deal with the threat and the likelihood of a biological attack. I

think I know what my government can do. I want my government

to obviously have the proper threat assessment, to know the likelihood of when, where and what magnitude, and if we can determine

that. I would like them to know potentially what kind of biological

agent would be used, you know. And I guess that would be based

on percentages, Mr. Decker, I mean, this more likely than that,

but—is that a yes?

Mr. DECKER. I think there would be some attempt to quantify

which one would be more probable, but that is problematic in itself.

Mr. SHAYS. So then my question is, the best answer I have is

that I want my government to have the antibiotics to deal with this

and potentially the vaccines where a vaccine would be helpful. Like

with anthrax it would be helpful even after someone has contracted

the disease, with the antibiotics. But what else can the government

do? Is it just prevention, or can we deal with it when it happens?

Mr. ALIBEK. My position again, vaccines—I don’t believe vaccines

are good protection against bioterrorism. What the government

needs to do is to liberate all possible protection and treatment approaches and just to start paying much attention to treatment, to

medical treatment and to emergency prophylaxes. Not much has

been done in this field.

Mr. SHAYS. More on treatment than a prophylactic.

Mr. ALIBEK. More on treatment and emergency prophylaxes.

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Mr. SHAYS. Is that based on your belief there can’t be immunity

from a biological attack?

Mr. ALIBEK. Not just my belief, our experimental data suggests

there are some directions, very promising directions, could be liberated and could result in appropriate protective means and approaches against biological weapons.

Mr. SHAYS. I misunderstand you. I say a prophylactic. Can you

vaccinate someone for all the potential biological agents?

Mr. ALIBEK. When we say prophylaxes, there are two types of

prophylaxes: first, vaccine prophylaxes and, second, urgent prophylaxes. It means—— Mr. SHAYS. When it happens—— Mr. ALIBEK. You can use it either immediately before or after exposure. There are different means and approaches to do this. In

this case, keeping in mind that the number of agents being used

in biological weapons is big—I would say large—it is very, very difficult to imagine that vaccines would have any volume in this case.

But there are many scientific approaches and many scientific developments already. For example, you can talk to DARPA, and they

can tell you about the immunological approaches they develop. In

my opinion, there is a very good direction funded by DARPA. But

there is another problem. Since we started developing vaccines

here in this country and in many other countries, we lost a huge

number of scientists who understand infectious diseases, infectious

diseases per se, and, I mean, we have got a huge number of microbiologists, but we have no many scientists who can deal with infectious disease.

Mr. SHAYS. In the United States and Europe?

Mr. ALIBEK. Unfortunately, yes. We need to revise this issue, and

we need to develop a new level of scientists, virologists, bacteriologists and experts in infectious diseases.

Mr. SHAYS. I would like to have counsel ask a question.

Mr. HALLORAN. Just in anthrax cases, the island—or not an island, but the island of Anthrax in the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan,

what can you tell us about the anthrax that’s there? What is the

likelihood that it’s still virulent; that if a terrorist from Afghanistan wanted to walk up there with a scoop and grab some anthrax,

what’s the likelihood that it’s still virulent and would be useful to

a terrorist?

Mr. ALIBEK. You know, this island in Aral Sea—Russian name

of this island was Virginia Island. It was the Soviet Union bioweapon proving testing ground. It has been used to test different

biological weapons including the plague, tuberculosis Glanders and

anthrax. The entire island is contaminated, completely contaminated. You can dig in and isolate spores of anthrax. They are still

virulent, and they could be used if there is a group having access

to this island. It wouldn’t be a big problem to isolate virulent

strains of anthrax from that island.

Mr. HALLORAN. The island is not guarded?

Mr. ALIBEK. You can come and have just a very simple protection, spray-type suits; just a simple protection, including gloves,

masks and just having simple equipment just to take samples in

petri dishes and just to see on the surfaces of petri dishes and then

separate colonies, and you’ve got enough material just for growing.

87

Mr. HALLORAN. And the expertise required to identify a lethal

strain, is that undergraduate, postgraduate?

Mr. ALIBEK. Undergraduate. I would say this: A level enough— in many cases it is not a matter, for example, of graduating or master’s degree knowledge. It is a matter of commitment and specific

desire, specific knowledge. You have a basic training in biology, but

if you commit to a personal group, you will be able to retrieve this

information from many sources available in the world. In this case,

for example, if you know how to grow microorganisms and you

know how to identify—because it is a simple process—with how to

identify a virulent strain. People think in many cases it is necessary to infect animals, but if they know that virulent strains

have capsule and they know how to grow, how take a sample or

prepare a slide and just staining the slide and see a capsule, you

know it is a virulent strain.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me close by asking, is there any question you

would like to ask yourself that you wished I had asked or some

other Member asked? Seriously. Is there a question we should have

asked?

Mr. PARACHINI. I would just urge the committee at some point

in its deliberations to think through the link between the state programs and terrorists, because at the moment there is no open

source information to show that evidence. And indeed, the numbers

about the number of people involved in former state programs who

may be around the world are in a fair amount of dispute. We’ve

heard very large numbers here, but there are many other views

about what the number is and where those people are, most of

whom are in Western countries, most of whom are in the United

States. So that gauge, the threat requires a little more discussion.

Mr. SHAYS. You don’t want me to assume that if Iraq has chemical agents, that the terrorists who have worked in Iraq have them?

Mr. PARACHINI. That’s right. That would be one thing, and also

the former Soviet agents or former Soviet scientists, given the size

of all the number of people that worked in the program, only a

much smaller number actually had weapons, critical knowledge,

and many of them have come here and have not gone to North

Korea, Iraq or Iran. So getting the dimension of the potential

threat is an important thing to run at.

Mr. SHAYS. Seems to me we can’t do it until we have that. I

make the assumption, admittedly based on all the hearings that we

have had, that it is so likely as to be almost absurd not to think

they haven’t gotten them, but your point is, I haven’t seen the

money. But we have people who have made it very clear to us that

pathetically that resources from the former Soviet Union to various

countries went for a song, that they didn’t pay a lot of money for

some of what they got. And one of the things that concerns me— one of the things that has concerned me has been—I am sorry. I

lost my train of thought, and I just want to get this point—that you

have various republics where you had nuclear programs in countries other than now Russia. Do I make the assumption that all the

chemical programs were in the Russia Federation, or were some of

them in now what are independent states, independent countries?

Mr. ALIBEK. Now, when we talk about, not chemical, biological

weapons program, apart—this program was located actually in

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three former Soviet Union republics. The major part was in Russia.

A small part was in Kazakhstan, and the third part was in

Uzbekistan.

Mr. SHAYS. That shouldn’t make me feel good, should it?

Mr. ALIBEK. Yeah. But when we say how many people knew,

know, and where these people are, what I would like to say I know

because—— Mr. SHAYS. Short answer.

Mr. ALIBEK. I am having some Russian scientists working for me

previously involved in Russian biological weapons program. They’ve

got contacts with Russian scientists who visited Iran and Iraq and

taught in Iran and Iraq, and they told these people who were in

those countries, told that at least Iranian scientists had very sophisticated knowledge in molecular biology. They were there.

Mr. SHAYS. I hear you loud and clear.

Mr. PARACHINI. The link I am trying to make is between the terrorist group and the state.

Mr. SHAYS. I think it is fair.

Dr. POST. And just to add and echo this point, that is a huge,

important intelligence target to be looking at that link, which we

at this point in time scarcely have adequately covered. It is a

human intelligence problem.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me say to you I think this has been a wonderful

panel, and I appreciate the moments when you were listening to

others and then moments when you were the key player. If one of

you wasn’t here, this panel would not have been as helpful. It was

the various contributions that you all made. And I hope our paths

cross again. Very, very valuable information, and I appreciate it a

lot. Thank you very much. This hearing is closed.

[Whereupon, at 1 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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