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80–610 PDF 2002

S. Hrg. 107–563

PREPARING FOR REALITY: PROTECTING AGAINST

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JUNE 28, 2002

Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman

CARL LEVIN, Michigan

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois

ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey

MAX CLELAND, Georgia

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware

JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota

FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee

TED STEVENS, Alaska

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah

JIM BUNNING, Kentucky

PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Staff Director and Counsel

KIERSTEN TODT COON, Professional Staff Member

RICHARD A. HERTLING, Minority Staff Director

LIBBY W. JARVIS, Legislative Director for Senator Thompson

JAYSON P. ROEHL, Minority Professional Staff Member

MORGAN P. MUCHNICK, Minority Professional Staff Member

DARLA D. CASSELL, Chief Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Opening statement: Page

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 1

Senator Cleland ................................................................................................ 4

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 5

Senator Dayton ................................................................................................. 7

WITNESSES

FRIDAY, JUNE 28, 2002

Lewis M. Branscomb, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Public Policy and Corporate Management and Emeritus Director of the Science, Technology and

Public Policy Program, Center for Science and International Affairs, John

F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University .................................. 7

Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., Vice President of Biological Programs, Nuclear

Threat Initiative ................................................................................................... 11

Janet Heinrich, Dr.PH., RN., Director, Health Care—Public Health Issues,

U.S. General Accounting Office .......................................................................... 14

William J. Madia, Ph.D., Director, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Executive Vice President, Battelle Memorial Institute ............................................... 16

J. Leighton Read, M.D., General Partner, Alloy Ventures ................................... 18

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Branscomb, Lewis M., Ph.D.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 7

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 45

Hamburg, Margaret A., M.D.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 11

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 66

Heinrich, Janet, Dr.PH., RN.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 14

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 75

Madia, William J., Ph.D.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 16

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 89

Read, J. Leighton, M.D.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 18

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 94

APPENDIX

Hon. John T. Hamre, President and Chief Executive Officer, Center for Strategic and International Studies, prepared statement ....................................... 99

American Society for Microbiology, prepared statement ...................................... 121

Questions for the Record from Senator Akaka and responses from:

Dr. Hamburg ..................................................................................................... 132

Dr. Heinrich ...................................................................................................... 134

(1)

PREPARING FOR REALITY: PROTECTING

AGAINST WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

FRIDAY, JUNE 28, 2002

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC.

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:38 a.m., in room

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

Present: Senators Lieberman, Akaka, Cleland, and Dayton.

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good morning, all. This hearing will come

to order. I want to welcome you to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee’s fourth hearing on the reorganization of our Federal Government to improve America’s domestic defenses.

I want to begin for the moment by thanking Senator Akaka (in

absentia) who is Chairman of this Committee’s Subcommittee on

International Security,Proliferation and Federal Services, for his

thoughtful and tireless work on many of the issues that we will be

discussing today.

Our task this morning, building on Senator Akaka’s work, is to

examine how a Department of Homeland Security can best meet

the technological challenge of protecting Americans from attacks by

weapons of mass destruction, and, of course, by that we mean

chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

It is self-evident, but worth repeating, that there is no greater

threat and no graver danger than the use of such weapons on our

soil, notwithstanding the terrible damage and death and destruction that we suffered from more traditional attacks, although used

unconventionally, on September 11.

The fight against terrorism might be described as brain-to-brain

combat. On those terms, America is very well-equipped to win. Our

computer scientists, biotechnology innovators, electrical and mechanical engineers, doctors, chemists, physicists, and a whole range

of other scientific and technological experts are the best in the

world. They have repeatedly worked wonders and will continue to

keep our Nation on the cutting edge of innovation.

But our enemies will also improvise and innovate in ways to hurt

more Americans, so we have got to marshal our scientific and technological strength to both defend and go beyond the capacity of

those who would do us damage. We have got to leverage America’s

wealth of technological resources to counter current threats and anticipate new ones.

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In this hearing, we are going to consider both this Committee’s

proposals and the President’s proposals for doing exactly that in

the framework of a new Department of Homeland Security. In this

particular area of homeland security, there is significant common

ground between our legislation and the President’s plan, but there

are also differences and I want to briefly lay them out at the start

and then hope to consider them as we go through this hearing.

The first is organizational structure. Our proposal would create

a Division on Emergency Preparedness and Response with FEMA,

the current FEMA, at its center, and that division would be focused

on response and preparedness, without regard to the nature of the

particular threat. We would then also establish in our bill a separate Office of Science and Technology within the new Department

of Homeland Security with the focused mission of coordinating all

research and development related to homeland security, including

but not limited to detection, prevention, and response to weapons

of mass destruction.

The President’s proposal would place greater emphasis on emergency preparedness and response to threats from weapons of mass

destruction, as I understand the proposal, and the separate division, which we call here the fourth division, called Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Countermeasures.

So I want to explore today the nature of our response in structure in this new Department to chemical, biological, and nuclear

attacks and to ask whether our preparedness and response for

those attacks might not better be included in a division that oversees emergency preparedness and response generally, rather than

in a separate division.

Also, the President’s proposed structure for the Department

would embed science and technology development within the division devoted to countermeasures when, in my view, it is more productive and logical to place all R&D efforts, ranging from detection

to protection to response, in an office focused solely on that task

and to elevate that office to the highest level within the Department. That is why our proposal would create—the initial proposal

that passed out of the Committee would create—an Office of

Science and Technology to carry out that function.

That brings me to a second area of concern and difference between the two proposals, which is research capability. The President’s plan would transfer many research and development functions from existing Departments including: Health and Human

Services, Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, and

the Department of Defense—to this new fourth Division on Countermeasures within the new Department.

I want to make sure that when we bring these entities into the

new Department, if we do, we leave the agencies and departments

from which they came in good stead. We should also ensure that

these entities are carefully and logically organized within the new

Department, if, in fact, they are moved there, with clean and clear

lines of authority.

For example, the President’s proposal suggests that the Department of Homeland Security will jointly manage biological research

efforts in conjunction with the Secretary of HHS. As far as I can

tell, and we have the experts at the table, there is no precedent for

3

co-direction of Federal programs in this way, and I want to explore

the wisdom of such an arrangement and how it might work if it

were going to work.

Third, rapid technology development and deployment. Here, since

the initial bill was reported out of the Committee, I think some of

my own ideas have developed, and that is why I want to explore

the possibility of creating a new development agency within the

new Department which might be called SARPA, which is Security

Advanced Projects Research Agency, modeled closely after DARPA,

the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the Pentagon,

which has become one of the great engines of innovation in American history.

DARPA, as the witnesses know, was created by President Eisenhower in 1958, originally called ARPA, in response to the launch

of Sputnik by the Russians. From the beginning, it was designed

to be something different, a lean, flexible agency that identifies our

military’s technological needs and then leverages with funding the

best minds in our country, in government—at the laboratories, for

instance—in academia, and in the private sector to meet those

needs.

DARPA’s nimble, aggressive, and creative approach has produced

remarkably impressive and effective war-fighting technologies and

has done so relatively quickly. And in the course of fulfilling that

central mission, DARPA has also developed technologies with broad

commercial and societal application, including something we now,

today, call the Internet. That came from DARPA.

I have high hopes and expectations for SARPA, the homeland security counterpart, which would be located possibly in the Office of

Science and Technology that I mentioned. I think we need dozens

of new security technologies and we need them quickly, and that

includes devices and systems to detect chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear devices, for instance, at borders, ports, and airports, but also devices that protect our cyberspace from devastating

attacks and that safeguard our physical infrastructure from sabotage, or biometric devices that could do a better job at allowing for

entry into secure facilities or filtering entry into secure facilities,

or work to pioneer the next generation of so-called smart buildings

that detect intruders and protect vital systems from being sabotaged. The range of potential projects is literally endless.

One of the critical functions of the new Department must also be

developing diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines to treat those who have

been exposed to or infected by a bioterror agent, and this is a massive undertaking because, right now, the truth is, we have very few

medical countermeasures available. That is why I think we have

got to direct the Department to develop a national strategy for engaging the Nation’s biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms as critical homeland defense allies and resources.

In the end, we will need to consider enacting tax incentives, procurement provisions, liability reform, and a revised drug approval

process to spur the development of these countermeasures, and I

have actually drafted in legislation that would do some of those.

Finally, I want to point out that if we are to muster all of America’s brain power to win this fight against terrorism, the new Department of Homeland Security must work closely with and learn

4

from the Department of Defense. The Pentagon has better technologies for detection, prevention, protection, and response to attack than anyone, anywhere. If our Department of Homeland Security is designed to reinvent all those wheels rather than selectively

adapting, applying, and focusing DOD resources, that would be a

mistake.

Senator Cleland is here. He is the source of some of the best

quotes I ever hear, so I want to just share with him one that I read

recently from Winston Churchill, who we are both—actually, all of

us are fond of quoting, particularly in these days because of the

challenges we face that are so different. In 1941, Churchill said in

a speech to the British people in which he intended to both inspire

the Allies and challenge, confront the Axis powers, he said to the

Axis powers, our enemies, ‘‘You do your worst and we will do our

best.’’ Today, we know that our enemies will do their worst to apply

technology to try to terrorize our people and disrupt our way of life.

We have an urgent duty now to do our best to develop better technologies, to preempt, prevent, and protect against even their most

advanced and unpredictable attacks, and I have no doubt that,

working together, we will achieve that mission.

Senator Cleland, thank you for being here.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CLELAND

Senator CLELAND. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I find

the title of the hearing, quite frankly, engrossing, ‘‘Preparing for

Reality: Protecting Against Weapons of Mass Destruction.’’ I think

that really is where we are.

Senator Sam Nunn, who is running the National Nuclear Threat

Initiative Program, of which Dr. Hamburg is a part, and who had

this Senate seat before I did for 24 years and was the former

Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has given me a couple

of concepts that I am working off of that, I think, to embrace the

new reality of certainly bioterrorism.

First, Senator Nunn said the organizing principle of the Cold

War was massing against the Soviet Union numbers of missiles,

and nuclear warheads, and measuring that mass in throw weights

and our ability to, in effect, mutually destruct ourselves. He said

the new era should be marked by the organizing principle of working against catastrophic terrorism, not just terrorism, but catastrophic terrorism, I think he puts it in a proper light, that the real

arms race now is not about missiles and throw weights and nuclear

warheads. The real arms race is a race between now and the time

that the terrorists get their hands on tools of catastrophic destruction—biological, chemical, or nuclear.

So I think we are in a new era here. The whole challenge, it

seems to me, for this country is pretty much two-fold. First, to go

on the strategic initiative abroad, fighting terrorists abroad in their

jungles, their caves, but being on the strategic defensive here. That

means that we have to get our act together. It means we have to

improve our coordination, cooperation, and communication in order

to properly defend ourselves.

That is why I support the Homeland Security Department initiative that came out of this Committee. I am an original cosponsor.

5

It is one reason why I feel very strongly that the CDC in Atlanta

should be the place where we place a center for bioterrorism preparedness and response. Thirty-four percent of the CDC’s workload

now has to do with bioterrorism. It is just not focused. It is not a

place where either the Director of HHS or the Director of Homeland Security can call and get the word, the definitive word, on

what is happening in terms of bioterrorism preparedness and bioterrorism response. I think we need that. That would improve coordination, cooperation, and communication tremendously.

My questions today, Mr. Chairman, will be along the lines of

what the panelists feel about how we can improve this Nation’s

preparedness and response, particularly in terms of bioterrorism,

and particularly where we have, in effect, two main pieces of guidance in the Federal Government that split the Federal Government. One piece of guidance is a 1995 directorate by President

Clinton by Executive Order mandating the FBI to be the lead agency on terrorism, then in 1998 a law by the U.S. Congress naming

the CDC as lead agency on bioterrorism.

And in a case like the anthrax situation, you had both agencies

going to the scene at the same time, one hopefully identifying it

properly, the CDC, then the FBI shutting the crime scene down. So

we have two conflicting pieces of guidance here. We need to

straighten that out, get that protocol right before the next biological attack.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Senator Cleland. I appreciate your being here. Senator Akaka.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to

say good morning to our witnesses and thank you for being here

today at this hearing as we discuss how the new Department of

Homeland Security should address threats from weapons of mass

destruction.

I want to particularly thank my good friend, Chairman Senator

Lieberman, for calling this hearing and to commend him for being

what I consider the man of the hour and a distinguished leader by

proposing legislation in the Senate on homeland security and holding hearings to deal with the critical issues that face our Nation.

His bill, as you know, was considered and passed by this Committee before the President issued his and so I want to give him

that credit and pronounce him as a great leader here in the Senate.

I have been working with him on emergency preparedness and

bioterrorism now, Mr. Chairman, for some time. We first asked,

can a bioterrorism attack happen? This is a little while ago. Today,

we ask, how can we reduce the threat? So it is a different kind of

question that we ask today.

The threats we face will continue to change as our adversaries

mature and new adversaries emerge. Therefore, whatever format

we choose for this new Department must be flexible, and flexible

enough to adapt to these changes quickly.

Unlike the Chairman’s bill, the President’s proposal would establish a fourth division in the Department of Homeland Security to

develop policies against weapons of mass destruction. However,

6

transferring bioterrorism and public health activities out of the Department of Health and Human Services and into a new agency

has the potential to fracture rather than consolidate functions. We

must be very careful to enhance rather than diminish our capability to meet emerging threats.

This new agency should coordinate and facilitate research and

development activities, which would encourage cooperation across

agencies and disciplines. The new Department should identify research priorities. The proposed division can make sure that new

countermeasures meet the needs of local, State, and Federal partners.

American ingenuity and creativity are among our greatest assets,

no question. We must harness this spirit and draw upon the vast

resources of the private sector in our search for effective countermeasures.

I recently met with inventors from Hawaii who are developing

environmental detection techniques and air filtration devices. They

contacted me because of their confusion over who they should approach within the government. Why not make this new Department a one-stop clearinghouse for information and guidelines on

R&D opportunities?

Research and development alone will not be effective if used inappropriately in preparedness efforts and training. The ability of

local fire fighters, police officers, and doctors to respond to WMD

terrorism must be improved.

I am not convinced that splitting mitigation and response activities between two different under secretaries as proposed by the

President will do this. Will shifting the authority for biomedical

research to a Department of Homeland Security while leaving the

expertise within HHS improve our ability to fight disease? Such actions seem unnecessary and could degrade our emergency preparedness efforts.

The goal must be to reduce the loss of life and property and restore public confidence following a terrorist attack. We should focus

our efforts not only on R&D, but in training appropriate individuals and the general public in what actions to take should we face

a WMD event.

As we work toward the objective, we should enhance the government’s response to natural disasters and public health events. For

example, we would need to ensure that APHIS has the resources

and personnel to continue to protect Hawaii’s fragile ecosystem

while meeting its proposed new homeland security functions. We

must be careful not to create a system that will divert personnel

and resources to homeland security from core agency missions,

thus making both less effective. We need a national strategy to

identify how this new Department will make America safer and her

people more secure. That is what we are here to do and we look

forward to your thoughts on this matter.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to the

testimony.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Akaka. Before you arrived, when I gave my statement, I thanked you for your leadership in this area through your Subcommittee over many years. I

regret that I did not repeat it when I introduced you, although

7

1The prepared statement of Dr. Hamre appears in the Appendix on page 99.

2The prepared statement of Dr. Branscomb appears in the Appendix on page 45.

somebody told me years ago that in Washington you know you are

doing well when somebody compliments you when you are not in

the room. [Laughter.]

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. So you are doing well, Senator Akaka.

[Laughter.]

Senator Dayton, thanks for being here.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DAYTON

Senator DAYTON. Thank you. I have nothing to say at the outset.

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks. I want to give my three colleagues here a medal. I am the Chairman of the Committee, so I

have to be here. Surprisingly—and I am thrilled to be here, may

I say to the witnesses. [Laughter.]

This is an important hearing. But what I am about to say to the

three of them is, the Senate surprisingly finished its pre-July 4 recess work yesterday, which it was expected to do today, so these

three are here out of a sincere desire to be involved in these deliberations and I thank them very much.

Senator DAYTON. Mr. Chairman, I will just say these hearings

have been outstanding. I have said that before, but it bears repeating. This series has been among the very best hearings I have attended in my 11⁄2 years in the Senate, so thank you and your staff.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Dayton. We have

been very fortunate to have a great group of witnesses on an important topic and thanks for your substantial contribution to the

hearings.

Two announcements. There is an empty chair there, and sadly,

it is Dr. John Hamre,1 who has terrible flu. He has submitted testimony and it will be part of the record. I believe we can release it

to the press if there is interest, or maybe we already have. We will

see him on another occasion.

Second, Senator Thompson wanted very much to be here today

but he could not and he wanted me particularly to welcome Dr.

Madia, who he is very proud to have here.

Let us begin with Dr. Lewis Branscomb, Professor Emeritus,

Public Policy and Corporate Management, JFK School of Government at Harvard, and co-chair of a very important committee about

whose work he will report. Dr. Branscomb, we look forward to your

testimony.

TESTIMONY OF LEWIS M. BRANSCOMB, PH.D.,2 EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY AND CORPORATE MANAGEMENT

AND EMERITUS DIRECTOR OF THE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY

AND PUBLIC POLICY PROGRAM, CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF

GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Dr. BRANSCOMB. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I do want

to discuss very briefly the work of the Committee on Science and

Technology for Countering Terrorism at the National Academy’s

8

National Research Council. Our report, entitled ‘‘Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism,’’ came out last Monday. I am very proud that Peggy Hamburg was a member of that Committee. So, too, was Ash Carter,

who testified, I believe, on Wednesday—— Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Dr. BRANSCOMB [continuing]. And a number of other distinguished Americans.

Our report was completed and was in the final stages of report

review when the President made his statement that he intended to

send forward a bill, though we were complete and in press before

I actually saw the details of it. But our report, in fact, was able

to address two very important features that we believe ought to be

in a Department of Homeland Security. But perhaps more important than that, this report, written by 119 experts, vetted and very

skillfully evaluated by 46 independent experts, contains 134 detailed recommendations discussing the science and technology responses to a great variety of threats, which we said as little about

as we had to in order to justify the conclusions.

It is very important that you appreciate that ours was a report

about catastrophic terrorism. We believe very strongly that there

are many kinds of attacks that could be catastrophic—defined in

terrorist sense. It is very important to appreciate that the legislative meaning, at least, of the words ‘‘weapons of mass destruction’’ do not cover all the—by any means—threats of catastrophic terrorism. Many of those threats could be caused by combinations of

the use of conventional explosives, perhaps with a cyber attack, or

perhaps with a radiological attack, which is surely not part of the

weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless, it is a source of terror,

nonetheless.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Dr. Branscomb, excuse me. How would

you describe what happened on September 11? I was finding myself

in my opening statement reaching for—— Dr. BRANSCOMB. Clearly catastrophic terrorism——

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Catastrophic terrorism.

Dr. BRANSCOMB [continuing]. But not done with weapons of mass

destruction—— Chairman LIEBERMAN. Exactly.

Dr. BRANSCOMB [continuing]. Unless you want to accept a broader definition of that term, which I would be happy to do in the

President’s bill, in which the R&D function is attached to one of

four divisions concerned with weapons of mass destruction as normally defined, as in the Department of Energy, as nuclear, biological, and military chemical weapons. Of course, we may interpret

chemical as including explosives, indeed in tank cars of industrial

chemicals which, under certain circumstances, could produce catastrophic consequences.

So we believe it is very important to look at the full range of possible attacks that would be intolerable if carried out against the

United States.

Senator DAYTON. Mr. Chairman, may I just interject?

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes, please.

Senator DAYTON. I am sorry, and I know you do not intend this,

but there was an attempted catastrophic attack of mass destrucVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:15 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 80610.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
9

tion, I do not know about the term, but we were told by Mayor

Giuliani when we were at Ground Zero the following week that

there were 25,000 people evacuated from the two towers because

they did not collapse immediately. The Pentagon plane fortunately

hit a relatively unpopulated area. The other plane was heroically

crashed before it could reach its intended target. The losses to

those individuals and the psychic damage to the country, was massive. So I do not dispute your characterization, but I do not want

anyone here listening to think that we do not treat this as an attempt of a mass destruction which was partially executed.

Dr. BRANSCOMB. Indeed, Mr. Dayton, that is exactly what I

meant to say. We regarded that as a catastrophic terrorist attack

and our report is about catastrophic attacks. The reason I have

avoided using the word ‘‘weapons of mass destruction’’ is because

in prior legislation and in a lot of public policy work, those words

do not include the cyber attacks, they do not include ordinary

chemical explosives, they do not include two tank cars full of two

industrial chemicals of the appropriate kind being brought together

side-by-side and somehow combined.

I really do not want to talk about things that I would just as

soon al Qaeda not know about, but I can tell you, there are many

major catastrophes that could involve more than 1,000 people

killed, more than $10 billion worth of damage done, or even with

less than that that cause the people to be so horrified and so frightened that they lose confidence in the government’s ability to protect

them. This is my personal definition of catastrophic terrorism.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. This is an interesting and important discussion. I think your point is well taken, and in some ways, we

have grown a little bit sloppy by referring as if it were an exclusive

definition to chemical, biological, and nuclear, as weapons of mass

destruction, as if they were the only weapons of mass destruction.

In fact, as you point out, there was obviously mass destruction on

September 11 without the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear

weapons. It was catastrophic. That is perhaps a more inclusive

term.

Dr. BRANSCOMB. When we became aware that the President intended to submit legislation and, therefore, there was a high likelihood that we would have a bipartisan conclusion and there would

be a Department created, we were still in operation so we were

able to draw two very important—well, really three very important

conclusions about any department, however it was structured.

One was that it must have a senior technical officer. Counterterrorism is a technology problem. This Department is going to be

a technology department and the best asset we have in this country, as you yourself said, are the brains and talents and enthusiasm, indeed, of the technical community to get behind this problem and see what we can do to substantially reduce it.

The other recommendation was something that we always had in

there because we think it ought to be done now, even while there

is an Office of Homeland Security and not yet a department, and

that is the creation of what we call the Homeland Security Institute. What we have in mind here is a very specific notion. We believe very strongly that the biggest problem in utilizing scientific

and technical capability is to truly understand what the problems

10

are, that is, what the threats are, what the vulnerabilities are, and

how to do the risk analysis, how to model and simulate the threats

and the vulnerabilities, how, in fact, to design test beds to determine what kinds of technologies actually work, to put together red

teams, to test the technologies, at least virtually, and find out if

they are working.

Ours is not a report with an R&D list of things to fund. This is

a report that is aimed at giving the Nation truly the capability that

it requires, no nonsense business. Therefore, we do deal extensively

with our concerns about how the government goes about getting

this work done, even though it does not deal specifically with the

structure of a department.

Let me also say that the report does provide, we believe, a very

useful tool to the Congress and the administration for testing what

alternative forms that the Department might take would most effectively permit the government to use the science and technology

capability to good use because we do, we believe, describe the criteria or the conditions that really are important for this R&D to

be effective. As I just said a few minutes ago, the first of those conditions is that we truly know how to set the priorities. There is an

enormous range of vulnerabilities. I do not think we can cover

them all with the same level of effort, or even should try. The critical ones deserve the attention.

Now, one other principle I would like to address is not so explicitly given in our study but it is something that Dr. Klausner and

I—we were the co-chairs of this study—believe is an important

principle, and the principle is not addressed in either of the two

bills, although the bills imply how this would be done.

The issue is this: We know that even if the administration puts

R&D activities into a department, it is only going to put a tiny

fraction of the government’s capability in science and technology.

We had a huge capability developed all through the Cold War. So

the question is, how would the Department acquire or access the

capabilities of those departmental resources for getting urgent research done, and there are three possibilities.

The first, nobody wants to do. That is to move the entire enterprise and have the Department be the government.

The second one is to do what I believe the President’s bill suggests they intend, at least with respect to NIH, and that is to say,

well, we can leave the people where they are in the current Department. We just take their money away and then give it back to

them. But this time, it comes back with micromanagement.

Now, we have done that experiment. Take a look at DOE. Ask

any set of witnesses whether they think the DOE system of managing its national laboratories is effective and they will tell you

that there is a long history of micromanagement. It is not intended.

It is just that the structure is such that the money that flows to

those DOE labs comes from very large numbers of different line

items in various appropriations managed by different offices, each

of whom has control over a little piece of the budgets of one of

those laboratories.

The third alternative, which we believe is the right one, is to ensure that there is a strong capability in the Executive Office of the

President to create strategy for Homeland Security, at least for the

11

1The prepared statement of Dr. Hamburg appears in the Appendix on page 66.

S&T piece of it—I believe it should be for all of it—to create that

strategy and to get commitments from the whole government to

support that strategy, so that the agencies that are qualified to

contribute will know what the strategy is, will put proposed programs in their proposals to the President and the Office of Management and Budget. Those will be vetted at the Executive Office of

the President on the advice of the Department, and let me say,

with the support of OSTP, and then there will be a line item placed

in that agency’s budget to do the work, and they know what they

are supposed to do, they are given the money to do it, and they run

the program.

They, of course, can be asked to be responsible to the Department to provide reports, briefings, whatever the Department needs

to assess whether the work is well done or not. But this is a different method than taking the money away from the Department

and then giving it back to them. Just give the money to the Department and make them commit what they are going to do.

Now, if I may, I would like to take off my academy hat and speak

for this Lewis Branscomb who has spent 20 years running government R&D, 15 running IBM’s R&D, and 15 years studying it at

Harvard. Because I was finally able to get your bill just a couple

days ago and I studied it very carefully, I have an appendix to my

testimony that separately is my personal evaluation, not the academy’s, the R&D dimensions of the proposed bills, each bill analyzed

separately.

What I would like to do, if I have a few minutes left, is to take

you through a comparison of the two bills, through at least eight

of ten very important attributes the bills need to satisfy.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I am going to ask if you would hold that

and then I will come back during the questioning period. I appreciate very much not only your testimony today, but the efforts you

made in preparing the written testimony, which we will go over. So

for now, I thank you, Dr. Branscomb. It has been very helpful testimony.

Our next witness is Dr. Margaret Hamburg, former Commissioner of Health of New York, Assistant Secretary of HHS, and now

the Vice President for Biological Programs at the Nuclear Threat

Initiative. Thank you.

TESTIMONY OF MARGARET A. HAMBURG,1 M.D., VICE PRESIDENT OF BIOLOGICAL PROGRAMS, NUCLEAR THREAT INITIATIVE

Dr. HAMBURG. Thank you. I very much appreciate the invitation

to discuss the policy implications for public health in bioterrorism

threats that would stem from the creation of a new Department of

Homeland Security, and my remarks will be much more focused on

that particular question, although I am delighted to talk more

broadly in the question and answer period.

The formation of such a Department is clearly needed, yet we

should move forward carefully, as you are doing, to define what are

the goals and how best to achieve them. The opportunities for

greater efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability are fairly eviVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:15 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 80610.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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dent in realms of overlapping activities, such as border security,

Customs procedures, and aspects of emergency response.

How best to organizationally address the activities related to bioterrorism prevention, preparedness, and response is a more complicated question. Bioterrorism is fundamentally different from

other security threats we face. Meaningful progress against the biological threat depends on understanding it in the context of infectious and/or epidemic disease. It requires different investments and

different partners.

Unless we recognize this, our Nation’s preparedness programs

will continue to be inadequately designed. The wrong first responders will be trained and equipped. We will fail to build the critical

infrastructure we need for detection and response. The wrong research agendas will be developed. And we will never effectively

deal with the long-term consequence management needs that such

an event would entail. We may also miss critical opportunities to

prevent an attack from occurring in the first place.

There are certain real advantages to placing these programs

within a new Federal Department of Homeland Security. The biological threat—and the public health programs required to address

it—is of profound importance to our national security. By residing

within this new Department, it may command more priority attention and support. It may help ensure that experts in biodefense and

public health preparedness are full partners at the national security table.

However, including biodefense and public health programs in the

new Department has some serious drawbacks. A fundamental concern is they will lose program focus and organizational coherence

by combining biodefense activities—which are largely within infectious disease, medicine, and public health—into a department devoted mainly to a very different set of security functions and concerns. These biodefense activities could well be swallowed up in

this huge new agency, which will likely lack the expertise and technical leadership necessary to plan and direct vital bioterrorism preparedness functions.

In addition, most of the public health activities required for bioterrorism are just as important for the day-to-day functions of public health and medical care. In the months since September 11, the

Bush administration, through programs developed and administered by the HHS Office of Public Health Preparedness and the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has made significant

progress building the programs necessary to strengthen public

health infrastructure for bioterrorism preparedness within this

broader context.

If these programs are carved out and moved into this new Department, it will disconnect certain functions, such as bioterrorism

surveillance, laboratory networks, and response from other essential components of infectious disease response and control. It will

thin out already limited expertise and enormously complicate the

ability of our public health partners at the State and local level to

work effectively. Rather than consolidating functions in a single

agency, transferring the bioterrorism preparedness activities into

this new Department may actually require the creation of parallel

and duplicative capabilities.

13

I would certainly recommend that HHS and CDC should continue to have direct responsibility for programs related to the public health infrastructure for infectious disease recognition, investigation, and response, including bioterrorism. However, we will

need to integrate these activities into the framework for homeland

security. To achieve this, a public health professional with appropriate expertise could be placed within the Department of Homeland Security with dual reporting to HHS. This person could work

closely with CDC to achieve mutually agreed upon national security and public health priorities for bioterrorism preparedness and

response.

Similarly, future preparedness requires a comprehensive biodefense research agenda that links national security needs and research and development priorities and that shows proper balance

and integration of relevant research activities across various departments and includes threats to humans, animals, and crops. Coordination of such an agenda could well be in the domain of a new

Department of Homeland Security, engaging the expert input of

Departments like HHS, DOD, Commerce, DOE, and USDA.

However, the role of the Department of Homeland Security

should be that of coordinator-facilitator only. The actual design, implementation, and oversight of the research agenda and its component programs must remain at the level of the mission agencies

where the scientific and technical expertise resides. HHS, in the

unique role played by NIH, represents the primary department

with responsibility for biomedical research and should remain central in setting priorities and directing and administering resources.

To address concerns raised across many domains, a new Department of Homeland Security will require significant expertise in

public health, infectious disease, and biodefense. This must be seen

as an important priority. The appointment of an Under Secretary

for Biological Programs should be considered to oversee and integrate the various activities going on within the Department that

relate to the biological threat. In addition, that individual might be

charged with liaison responsibility to the various other departments with significant responsibilities and programs in the biological arena.

In the final analysis, strengthening our homeland security programs will depend on achieving dramatically improved coordination

and accountability across many agencies, as well as the private sector. This could be achieved in many ways. Furthermore, no matter

where the lines are drawn to define the components of a new

Homeland Security Department, critical activities will fall outside.

So whatever the new Department may look like, we must establish

additional mechanisms to assure adequate oversight and coordination.

There are many more outstanding concerns that we could discuss

and that will need to be clarified before such important legislation

is passed, but in the interest of time, I have limited my comments.

I deeply respect your efforts, Mr. Chairman and the Members of

this Committee, in taking on this vital but difficult challenge. I

welcome the opportunity to work with you on this and would be

happy to answer any questions you may have.

14

1The prepared statement of Ms. Heinrich appears in the Appendix on page 75.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Dr. Hamburg, for an excellent

opening statement.

Next, we are going to hear from Janet Heinrich, who is the Director of Health Care and Public Health Issues with the U.S. General Accounting Office. Thanks for being here.

TESTIMONY OF JANET HEINRICH, DR.PH, RN,1 DIRECTOR,

HEALTH CARE—PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Ms. HEINRICH. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I

appreciate the opportunity to be here to discuss the establishment

of a Department of Homeland Security. My remarks will focus on

the aspects of the President’s proposal concerned with public health

preparedness found in Title V of the proposed legislation and the

transfer of research and development programs found in Title III.

The consolidation of Federal assets and resources for medical response to an emergency, as outlined in the proposed legislation,

has the potential to improve efficiency and accountability for those

activities at the Federal, State, and local levels. The programs with

missions closely linked to homeland security that would be consolidated include FEMA, certain units of DOJ, and the HHS Office of

the Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness.

The Strategic National Stockpile currently operated by CDC would

be transferred to the new Department, as would the Select Agent

Registration Enforcement Program.

Issues of coordination will remain, however. The proposed transfer of the MMRS does not address the need for enhanced regional

communication and coordination and the NDMS functions now as

a partnership between or among HHS, the Department of Defense,

the Department of Veterans Affairs, FEMA, State and local governments, and the private sector. Thus, coordination across departments will be required.

The President’s proposal to shift the authority, funding, and priority setting for all programs assisting State and local agencies in

public health emergencies from HHS to the new Department raises

concern because of the dual-purpose nature of these programs.

These include the CDC Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response

Program and the HRSA Hospital Preparedness Program. Functions

funded through these programs are central to investigations of naturally occurring infectious disease outbreaks and to regular public

health communications, as well as to identify and respond to bioterrorist events.

Just as in the West Nile virus outbreak in New York City, which

initially was feared to be a bioterrorist event, when an unusual

case of disease occurs, public health officials must investigate to determine the cause. Although the origin of the disease may not be

clear at the outset, the same public health resources are needed to

investigate.

While under the proposal the Secretary of Homeland Security

would be given control over these programs, their implementation

would be carried out by another department. The proposal also authorizes the President to direct that these programs no longer be

15

carried out in this manner without addressing the circumstances

under which such authority would be exercised.

We are concerned that the separation of control over programs

from their operations could lead to difficulty in balancing priorities.

Although HHS priorities are important for homeland security, they

are just as important to the day-to-day needs of public health agencies and hospitals, such as reporting meningitis outbreaks or providing alerts to the medical community about influenza. The current proposal does not clearly provide a structure that ensures that

both the goals of homeland security and public health will be met.

The new Department would also be given overall responsibility

for research and development for Homeland Security. In addition

to coordination, the role of the Department should include forging

collaborative relationships with programs at all levels of government in developing a strategic plan for research. The new Department will need to develop mechanisms to coordinate information on

research being performed across the government as well as end

user needs. It should be noted that the legislation tasks the new

Department with coordinating civilian events only, leaving out

DOD and the intelligence agencies and also would allow it to conduct relevant research.

The proposal would transfer parts of DOE’s nonproliferation and

verification research program to the new Department. For example,

it is not clear whether only the programmatic management, the

dollars would move, or that the scientists conducting the research

would move. Again, because of the multi-purpose nature of these

research programs, it may be more prudent to contract with the

laboratories to conduct the research rather than to move the scientists.

The proposal would transfer the responsibility for all civilian

health-related biological defense research programs, but the programs would continue to be carried out through NIH. These dualuse programs include efforts to understand basic biological mechanisms of infection and to develop and test rapid diagnostic tools,

vaccines, and drugs. For example, research on a drug to treat patients with HIV is now being investigated as a prototype for developing drugs against smallpox.

The proposal to transfer responsibility for research raises many

of the same concerns we have with the public health preparedness

programs. Although there is a clear need for the new Department

to have responsibility for setting policy, developing a strategic plan,

and providing leadership for overall coordination for research, we

are concerned that control and priority setting responsibilities will

not be vested in the entity best positioned to understand the potential of basic research efforts or the relevance of research being carried out in other non-homeland defense programs.

In summary, many aspects of the proposed consolidation of response activities and research are in line with our previous recommendations to consolidate programs, coordinate functions, and

provide a statutory basis for leadership of Homeland Security. We

have, though, several clear concerns.

Mr. Chairman, this completes my prepared statement and I

would be happy to answer any questions.

16

1The prepared statement of Dr. Madia appears in the Appendix on page 89.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Ms. Heinrich. That was very

helpful.

Next, Dr. William Madia, Director of the Oak Ridge National

Laboratory and also Executive Vice President of Battelle Memorial

Institute, which puts you on both coasts.

Dr. MADIA. Both sides, exactly.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you.

TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM J. MADIA, PH.D.,1 DIRECTOR, OAK

RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY AND EXECUTIVE VICE

PRESIDENT, BATTELLE MEMORIAL INSTITUTE

Dr. MADIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee. It is a pleasure to appear before you this morning and provide my testimony. I will focus my remarks on how we can best

apply the U.S. research enterprise in support of the proposed Department of Homeland Security, particularly as it applies to weapons of mass destruction threats.

The homeland security challenges we face are enduring,

daunting in scope, and technically complex. Therefore, we require

a science and technology response that is equally comprehensive.

With its emphasis on the critical role of science and technology,

I would like to express my strong support for the President’s proposal for the creation of a Department of Homeland Security. I will

make four points regarding science and technology in this new Department, which I believe are fully consistent with the President’s

proposal.

First, I support the new Department being formally assigned the

role of leading the Nation’s technology development and deployment efforts as they apply to homeland security. The proposal

properly establishes that cross-cutting responsibility for science

and technology with the new Department’s Under Secretary for

Chemical, Biological, Radiation, and Nuclear Countermeasures.

Next, since we will never be able to protect ourselves against

every threat, nor will there be unlimited resources, we must set our

science and technology priorities based upon the best understanding of our vulnerabilities, the possibilities offered by science

and technology, and the cost effectiveness of proposed solutions.

Thus, it is essential for the new Department to establish a dedicated risk analysis and technology evaluation capability, obviously

informed by the threat identification and analysis functions of our

intelligence community.

Third, I support the establishment of a problem-directed technology development program in the new Department. This program

should be responsive to the specific challenges and needs of the

customers of the new Department, both those inside of DHS as well

as other State and local agencies, those who actually will end up

the technologies developed here. These programs should be designed to ‘‘close the gap’’ between new ideas for fighting terrorism

and deployable solutions. The mode in which DARPA operates

comes to mind as a good management model, as has been suggested by Dr. Marburger and also previous panelists.

17

In addition, the elements of management flexibility and control

outlined in the President’s proposal will be particularly important

in managing the R&D function of the new Department.

Finally, the reason our Nation was able to deploy relevant and

impactful technologies almost immediately in response to the terrorist attacks is because of past investments in the basic research

which underpins these technologies. To ensure our long-term national capacity to create new and better solutions, we should provide continuing strong support for basic research programs in such

areas as information technology, modeling and simulation, biotechnology, nanosciences, and advanced center technologies.

Like others, my comments do not imply the creation of extensive

research capabilities in this new Department. Rather, DHS should

draw broadly on our existing government, university, and industrial research base.

In particular, the national laboratories under the stewardship of

DOE should play a very substantial role, since these laboratories

have a wealth of specialized capabilities associated with weapons

of mass destruction, and in particular in addressing nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological threats. There are numerous examples of these capabilities, but they are in the written testimony and

I will not cover them here.

The national labs, however, must, in turn, focus on and deliver

against this new Department’s science and technology agenda. The

Homeland Security Technology Center proposed at Lawrence Livermore provides a needed focus for this coordination and the intended Centers of Excellence at the major DOE national laboratories provides for an effective way to obtain the necessary commitment of resources.

In closing, I would like to reflect that only twice before in our

history have we seen the Nation’s scientific community be so galvanized around a critical national issue as they are today on meeting

the needs of homeland security challenges. The first occasion,

which was the development of the atomic bomb through the Manhattan Project, ended up creating the Atomic Energy Commission,

which later became the Department of Energy.

The second occasion was a response to Sputnik and President

Kennedy’s challenge to place a man on the moon within a decade.

That led to the creation of NASA.

With the formation of the Department of Homeland Security to

give leadership and a focal point to our science and technology community, I am confident that today’s scientists and engineers will

meet our homeland security challenges in a way that is every bit

as successful as they have been in earlier times.

Thank you, and, of course, I would be glad to answer any questions you have.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Dr. Madia, for an excellent statement.

Our final witness is Dr. J. Leighton Read, who is a General Partner of Alloy Ventures. In a general sense, Dr. Read is here to represent the private sector and the considerable contribution that the

private sector can make to marshaling our technological and scientific strength in the war against terrorism, so I thank you very

much for being here.

18

1The prepared statement of Dr. Read appears in the Appendix on page 94.

TESTIMONY OF J. LEIGHTON READ, M.D.,1 GENERAL PARTNER,

ALLOY VENTURES

Dr. READ. Thank you, Senator, and it is also not only a privilege

to address the Members, but also to hear my fellow witnesses’ comments, informed by their experience and thoughtful work.

I am a physician by training. My academic research dealt with

cost effectiveness and balancing of risk and benefit and costs in

evaluation of new medical technologies and important medical decisions, but for the last 14 years, I have been starting biotechnology

companies, helping them get funded, and now financing them as a

venture capitalist.

I do not know that I can carry the full weight of representing the

private sector in this country, but I would be delighted to share

some thoughts with you about how people representing these vast

pools of capital are standing by to invest in technology. There are

about $75 billion of capital committed to venture capital partnerships that are not yet committed to new companies. So there are

vast pools of capital out there.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Just repeat that again so we all appreciate it.

Dr. READ. There are $75 billion committed by America’s pension

funds and endowments and individuals to venture capital partnerships that are ready to be invested. This is current—— Chairman LIEBERMAN. It is sitting, waiting for appropriate opportunities, right?

Dr. READ. That is correct. By the way, talking about a few numbers, I saw a report the other day that venture capital-based companies now produce about 11 percent of the GDP, over $1 trillion,

and if you add up all the direct and indirect jobs, you can get to

something like 27 million jobs. So this is an important part of the

economy.

These vast flows of capital include also the public markets, and

in general, these investments are focused not on companies that

earn their profits by doing contract R&D or by providing service

businesses. The real attraction for this kind of capital is to invest

in relatively high-risk, high-opportunity companies that can generate explosive growth into huge markets with really clear unmet

need. That really brings us to the gap or the problem that the creation of a Homeland Security Department can address, because

right now, it is not clear that there are those markets and that

there are those opportunities in developing countermeasures.

There is a lot of marvelous and important groundwork being laid

with R&D that is being sponsored inside the government and outside the government that will help provide a basis for that, but we

usually—almost always—need the private sector to finish the job

for countermeasures such as vaccines and drugs, biologicals, diagnostics—and it has to be clear that there is a market.

So I would like to emphasize the importance of including a focus

on the results, the outcome, rather than just the process. The creation of a strong, centralized prioritization focus in the Department

is absolutely essential to get this done. It is also very important

that the incentives be clear. I do not think markets fail with reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:15 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 80610.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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spect to these kinds of products. Markets signal us about what the

incentives really are, and some of your proposals, Mr. Chairman,

are very welcome and deserve very serious thought.

In my opinion, in many cases, the most useful incentives are

going to be quite particular to both the nature of the threat, whether it is biological or otherwise, and maybe even within the realm

of biological, there may be important particularities in terms of

how to design the incentives, whether a purchase fund or other

types of incentives related to intellectual property or tax are important.

It would be a terrific opportunity to actually ask that the Department engage in dialogue with appropriate experts and that the Department have the ability to help influence and design incentives

that will then require legislation to move forward, so I hope that

the Committee will consider making that part of the authorization.

From my own experience, trying to figure out who is the go-to

person to help make a decision or indicate whether there is going

to be government interest, a customer, in other words, it is very

hard. You have read report after report from Hart-Rudman, the

DSB reports, and others that we have got this massive problem of

duplication and silos and lack of coordination. Clearly, that is one

of the opportunities that this Department can address.

We are going to have to make some tough choices. We are going

to have to pull some things out of departments where people have

been comfortable and there is a lot of expertise in order to get the

coordination that we need, and I would advocate that we do make

those tough choices, and then we also have to deal with the matter

of coordination. I am concerned about having parallel functions

that provide too many parallel groups. It will just continue to compound the problem of more silos.

So it should be clear to the private sector players that we want

to engage, who to go to, who has got the decisionmaking authority,

and what the ultimate rewards will be for those that are successful.

Now, one more point I would like to make. Some people have

pointed out, or argued, worried, that this is too hard. There are

just too many threats. Well, actually, if we think carefully about

where the real damage could come from, infectious agents and specific biological agents that are readily available to our opponents

now represent an opportunity to go ahead and commit to significant programs, as you said before in your opening remarks.

We generally have been successful when we try and build vaccines, for example, for particular targets. HIV is a counter-example.

It remains very stubborn and elusive, but in general, when we

have really focused our basic science at NIH, our applied research

in industry, we have been successful in creating vaccines for important targets. So there is a lot of room for hope there. There is dualuse. There are going to be cases where the government is the only

customer, but it is not just this government.

There was a little earthquake in Taiwan that produced a 10-day

delay in the shipment of chips, disk drives, flat-panel displays to

my home in Silicon Valley and a few dozen companies in Silicon

Valley missed their quotas, missed their financials for the quarter.

20

This was the September 1999 event in Taiwan. That was just a 10-

day delay.

Imagine five cases of confirmed smallpox on the island of Taiwan, how many months it will be before a shipping container in the

Port of Oakland or a 747 full of those parts lands in the San Francisco airport? We and our trading partners are actually in an interconnected web. There has not been enough discussion about how

we can get our trading partners and our allies engaged to pay their

share of this so that we can create large enough markets to get the

countermeasures that we need.

I look forward to a chance to discuss this further in our hearing.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Very interesting testimony.

Let me just go back to—as I begin my questioning—the $75 billion, to be clear. This, quite literally, is money that is waiting for

the right opportunities, correct?

Dr. READ. That is correct, Senator.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I must say, and I do not know whether

my colleagues on the Committee have found it—that since the tragedy of September 11, you have a sense that there are people in the

private sector who have been active in relevant areas and are rushing to see if there is some way they can do business with the Federal Government, and that is part of the genius of our system. Obviously, we have to be discriminating customers, but it is a tremendous source of strength for us.

Obviously, the overall question we are asking here today is how

best to marshal our public and private scientific and technological

resources to aid us in the war against terrorism. For us, this becomes, in some senses, a much less imaginative but daunting challenge, nonetheless, which is where do we put the boxes and how

do we organize them with lines of accountability and responsibility

to make this work most effectively and efficiently.

So the first question I want to ask is that in the President’s proposal, interestingly, they have combined in this fourth section not

only response to weapons of mass destruction but, if you will,

science and technological responses. For now, I am wondering, why

do that? In other words, why not take the actual response to the

weapons of mass destruction functions and put it into the FEMA

center division that both we and the President create and then do

something separate for the science and technology.

I welcome contrary points of view, obviously. I wonder what the

panel’s reaction, any of you, is to that. Dr. Branscomb, or any of

you?

Dr. BRANSCOMB. I believe that the Committee’s bill, S. 2452, is

in many respects a cleaner—from a managerial point of view, a

cleaner structure than the President’s. It clearly identifies the

whole collection of border issues, that is, trying to control what

comes in in the way of a threat, that is, trying to prevent the

threat from being realized. That is one set of functions. And the

other set of functions are those that involve a response to an actual

realization of a threat.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right.

Dr. BRANSCOMB. Those are two different things. I think you have

it sorted out just right.

21

I would comment that I found it very surprising that your Borders Directorate does not have the Transportation Security Administration from the Department of Transportation in it, but that is

really not an R&D organization. In some ways, I wish it were. It

has very little such capacity, but it is very much concerned with

the fact that we do not have a single border. We have a very porous

border. We live in a coupled world in global economies and the border ends up wherever that container ends up. So I think that unit

needs to be in the program.

I am not happy with the notion that a number of specific research capabilities outside, such as the NIS Computer Security Division, would be picked up and moved into the Division. It can be

more effective where it is.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. And which division is it moved into?

Dr. BRANSCOMB. In the President’s bill, I believe it is moved into

their first one, the Title II one.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Correct. Incidentally, two things. One is

that the President’s bill did add the new Transportation Security

Agency to the border, the so-called ‘‘prevent’’ division, which we did

not do. We did not do it because we heard some disagreement, but

also because the new Transportation Security Agency was just

being formed. Governor Ridge spoke to me before the President and

the administration put out their bill and I told him then and I say

it again, that I think they did the right thing. TSA should be in

the new department.

Second, I hope members of the panel have gotten the sense, that

even though there are differences between the President’s bill and

the Committee bill, we are really working in a cooperative way

now—without a lot of rigidity or pride of authorship—to figure out

from the various proposals which is the best.

Any other responses to that? Yes, Dr. Madia.

Dr. MADIA. Mr. Chairman, to me, there are two very important

issues on the question you asked. The first is addressed in the

President’s bill. It clearly identifies the cross-cutting nature of

science and technology in that fourth directorate, and so it is essential that that role be clear. We are talking about the role. And so

this is not an organization dedicated just to weapons of mass destruction R&D, but it has got a broad cross-cutting R&D function.

The second, and probably the more important factor, is who you

select for that position. Boxology is kind of nice, but the actual person in that role, as mentioned by a previous panelist, I think becomes the most important factor. Having an R&D person with the

kind of culture and understanding of how to move science to technology to application will ultimately be more important than the

structure, in my opinion.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is a good point. Yes, sir, Dr. Read.

Dr. READ. Just a brief addition. It seems to me that there are

going to be opportunities to organize around the threat, as well,

rather than the boxology that reflects our current governmental

structure, and I would just urge, for example, that there be a decisionmaker at a high enough level related to the bio issues and a

supporting panel at a high enough level that that is not lost. In

some ways, there may be good models from the military that could

be borrowed there in terms of——

22

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Say a little more about that, in terms of

organizing for the threat.

Dr. READ. What I have in mind is that, and particularly with respect to engaging the private sector, I think that the nature of the

problems are quite diverse. In fact, going back to an early discussion, it may be time to retire the term ‘‘weapons of mass destruction’’ because it is so confusing. There are very important issues related to bio that may be unique to bio. And while the management

of science and management of research and some of that infrastructure is common, I think having people who are really the right experts for chem and nuclear sitting in on those discussions is not an

efficient use of resources and that we ought to be able to concentrate the prioritization within bio. The interaction with the private sector and this huge task of coordinating all the places in the

government should be concentrated at a high enough level that it

is really meaningful by the specific threat.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good point. Again, I think from my point,

I am going to try to stop using the term ‘‘weapons of mass destruction.’’ It takes a little more time to say chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear, but as we learned on September 11, a plane

can be a weapon of mass destruction.

Dr. Hamburg.

Dr. HAMBURG. I just wanted to add that while I recognize there

are enormous pressures to move swiftly to create this new Department, there is a strong argument to be made, as my colleague, Dr.

Branscomb did, that we really need a strategic framework as we

shape this new Department, really defining the goals and objectives in the different arenas and the roles and responsibilities of

the various component departments and agencies and also recognizing that, in addressing this problem, how the private sector and

voluntary organizations interact is also key to a comprehensive and

ultimately effective approach.

Perhaps it is a timid proposal, but perhaps one can do this effort

in a somewhat incremental way, really focusing first on consolidating those programs, policies, and activities that clearly support

a set of well-defined homeland security missions and concerns, the

border security, Customs activities, some of the law enforcement

and emergency response activities.

Recognize that some of the science and technology and research

enterprises that we have been discussing really need to be closely

embedded in the technical and scientific expertise that resides

within a broader range of departments and that we need to be

careful about disrupting many of those activities, including the

public health activities that I discussed in my oral testimony. Coordination and accountability are key to making integrated, coherent, and comprehensive strategy in this area.

Actually moving the component pieces, taking away the money,

giving it back to micromanage within those departments and other

strategies that have been proposed may not ultimately be the most

effective approach, and so in those arenas, we may want to first establish a much more structured coordination and accountability

mechanism and then make decisions about how to move some of

the actual pieces into an organizational structure.

23

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is helpful. My time is up, but Dr.

Branscomb, do you want to say a quick word?

Dr. BRANSCOMB. I just want to say there are three serious problems with the President’s proposal for how to organize the R&D in

the Department. The first is that I believe it is totally unmanageable to give one of the four operating executives in the Department

not only the responsibility for this enormously important problem

of nuclear weapons and biological warfare and chemical warfare,

they are also assigned by law and R&D function in support of those

problems, and then they are also assigned an R&D function in support of the whole Department.

They are never going to be able to make those trade-offs between

their R&D obligations to their own operational mission. Nobody

will ever be satisfied they have done enough against those threats,

and they simply will not do it for the rest of the Department.

The second problem is that the people you would most like to

have doing that work on the nuclear problem and on the biological

problem are the scientists at Livermore Laboratories. Those are

wonderfully brainy people, very smart, long record of worrying

about security. I do not think there is a one out there who has a

clue what a fireman needs and can use. What if you give it to the

fireman and he tries it and it does not work? He throws it down

and says, ‘‘I have been fighting fires all my life. I am just going

to go do it.’’ That is the spirit of our first responders, and the R&D

has to be very sensitive to the nature of those people’s real requirements.

The third problem is that even if that Title III division did not

have this conflict of mission problem, you still have the problem

that you have got four operating executives sitting at the table, one

of whom is also the corporate R&D manager. I do not think that

works either. I think there has to be a corporate R&D manager,

which, indeed, your bill provides.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks. That is very helpful. Senator

Cleland.

Senator CLELAND. Yes, sir. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

What a fascinating series of hearings we have had. I hope the

American people are tuning in and listening. As Dr. Madia has indicated, this is one of those key turning points, moments, or pivotal

times when the country has been shocked and—or from Aldous—

if you like my quotes, here is one more. Aldous Huxley, the great

British author, said, ‘‘Experience is not what happens to a man, it

is what a man does with what happens to him.’’

So here we are. We know what happened to us, and part of this

Governmental Affairs challenge here on this Committee is to figure

out now what we do about it, and there are lots of ideas.

But I will say, Dr. Branscomb, that I have often thought, coming

from a very small town where I know the firemen and the policemen and the EMS people by name, and their dog and their cat——

[Laughter.]

Senator CLELAND [continuing]. That unless homeland security

works at the hometown level, it is not going to work. So I think

that is part of our challenge.

24

I do favor the Homeland Security Department, but I think it has

ultimately hometown mission. That is the bottom line for it to work

there.

I will say, Dr. Read, that if you know where you can lay your hands on $75 billion, you can buy ImClone, you can buy

WorldCom—— [Laughter.]

Senator CLELAND [continuing]. You can buy Tyco, you can buy

Enron cheap—— [Laughter.]

Senator CLELAND [continuing]. And save the American economy.

I just thought I would throw that out there for you. [Laughter.]

Dr. Hamburg, I would like for you to think about this. The GAO

has pointed out about the President’s proposal that the proposal

does not sufficiently clarify the lines of authority of different parties in the event of an emergency, such as between the FBI, and

public health officials investigating a suspected bioterrorism incident. This is exactly what we went through with the anthrax attack.

Again, the CDC, the bug FBI, was called into the case and they

identified the bug quickly. Then the FBI itself was called in, shut

down the crime scene, and in many ways, the CDC and the FBI

then competed for their own piece of the pie, I guess, and there

were two competing interests. The FBI is basically the law enforcement agency. As we saw in testimony yesterday, it is basically an

11,000-person law enforcement agency which is involved in secrecy,

which is involved in non-dissemination of information, and probably building a court case over a long period of time.

An agency like the CDC is a public health agency that is interested in responding quickly to emergencies and getting information

out, disseminating information quickly in order to prevent either

further attacks or to deal with an attack underway. So two competing interests here.

Again, the President’s proposal has the CDC, for bioterrorism

purposes, responding policy-wise to the Secretary of Homeland Security. But for operational purposes, I guess rations and quarters

as we used to call it in the military, to the Secretary of HHS. I

wonder if you feel that is a problem.

One of the ways I would solve it is create a center at the CDC,

not move these wonderful people out who have wonderful synergy

with the other public health officials in the other centers, but create a center at the CDC. Because 34 percent of the CDC’s work

now has to do with bioterrorism, except it is, OK, you do this for

a few hours and you do this over here. There is no real dedicated

center. You have got a lot of experts, but there is not a dedicated

center to that focused on it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, that

then is, in effect, the Center of Excellence for what you do to prepare for a biological attack and what you do to respond to it.

If you had the center, then I think that dual master responsibility would work for policy, the Homeland Security. For administration, operational purposes, coordination with the other elements

of the CDC, you would answer to HHS and the public health interests in there. Do you see this dichotomy creating problems, or is

this the way to go?

Dr. HAMBURG. I think that your question really gets to the heart

of the fact, as I discussed in my testimony, that the biological

25

threat is different and it is intrinsically embedded in the broader

threat of preventing and controlling infectious disease threats. The

CDC is really a unique national and international resource in

terms of expertise and leadership in the area of infectious disease

prevention and control and I do believe that we need to ensure that

it is adequately supported in its activities that are broadly based

and that we do not start to cut up the pieces, labeling some as bioterrorism preparedness and others as infectious disease control.

The anthrax letters that were disseminated last fall in some

ways were misleading for what a bioterrorism attack might look

like. I do not think the next time we see anthrax powder it will be

delivered in a letter with a note saying, ‘‘This is anthrax. Take penicillin.’’ Most likely, there will be a silent release and without a fortuitous discovery or an announcement by the perpetrator. We will

not even know that an attack has occurred until individuals start

to appear in doctors’ offices, emergency rooms, or intensive care

units, now spread out in time and place from the initial site of release.

We will not know whether it is a naturally occurring outbreak

or an intentionally caused event in many of the scenarios that are

likely or might potentially occur. Therefore, we need to have a wellcoordinated and certainly well-funded and adequately supported infectious disease detection investigation and response capability and

CDC is clearly our Nation’s agency to lead that effort.

Senator CLELAND. And clearly, that is the key. Who is the go-to

person when something like this happens? Other agencies are involved. Initially, I had legislation that said that, yes, based on the

Presidential directive in 1995, the FBI in terms of a terrorist attack was the lead agency. In 1998, the Congress says CDC is the

lead agent in terms of a bioterrorist attack.

I resolved that dilemma by legislation saying that the Secretary

of HHS, in effect, had the power by the stroke of a pen to declare

a national public health emergency and then, boom, the CDC

would automatically be the lead agent. Maybe it should be the Secretary of HHS. Maybe it should be the Secretary of Homeland Security. I do not know, but the point is, there seems to be a threshold here in a terrorist attack that all of a sudden you realize, hey,

this is not just a naturally occurring outbreak here. We have got

a problem, and we had better get on it.

So I think there is a threshold level there where, ultimately, the

experts, the 8,500 scientists and experts that deal with this are

keyed in as the lead agent. That is why I am such a big advocate

for a center.

Dr. READ. This is a very constructive observation that you have

made about localizing that. I have worked with the CDC quite a

bit in connection with a company developing a new flu vaccine. One

of the most unique clubs in medicine are these doctors who wear

these neckties or scarves with a picture of a shoe with a hole in

the bottom. These are the guys and women who have served in the

epidemiologic intelligence service who are the first responders to

investigate. We really have two classes of events that actually call,

I think, for very different skill sets and responsibilities.

Most of the white powder episodes, we are not going to know

whether it is a disease or a false alarm, an influenza epidemic comVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:15 Aug 12, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 80610.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
26

ing around, and it is going to require that kind of medical detective

work and the huge, competent laboratory back-up that our current

CDC provides.

At some point in the future, someone will make the discovery

that flips a switch and says, this is not a naturally occurring disease. This is a terrorist attack. And there will be the need for

criminal law enforcement investigatory work, but more urgently,

and especially if it is a transmissible agent, this is a whole different category than what we faced with anthrax, a completely different category.

We are going to face some really tough new issues that we

should be preparing for now. The quarantine that must be enforced, and let us face it, it is a military operation, our National

Guard, our police function, and maybe even our regular military

are going to be involved.

This is not part of the culture of the current CDC, so we need

to think about different phases, sort of the screening and the public

health role that they do so well, and maybe that is the right place

to put that center for after the switch has been flipped, but it is

a different set of skills and responsibilities and I just urge careful

thought about putting them in that role, in a police and quarantine

role. We are going to face some very tough challenges as a society

when that happens and we can minimize the pain by really thinking it through in advance.

Senator CLELAND. I think that is the point. I think that is one

of the reasons for the hearings that we have had is to establish

the—is it your understanding the best thing we can do is establish

the protocol? Work these kind of relationships out before the popcorn hits the fan? Because we really did not have those relationships spelled out. Agencies just kind of reacted to the anthrax

thing and a bunch of agencies got their fingers in the pie and—— Dr. READ. They did not do that bad of a job, by the way.

Senator CLELAND. Right, but there was a lot of miscommunication up front and early, and who speaks for the government

and who does not. Dr. Madia.

Dr. MADIA. From the national lab perspective, we would support

your idea of the Centers of Excellence because it does deal with the

fundamental question you asked. It allows the laboratories, or

CDC, in your case, to retain its own organic capability, the people,

the infrastructure, the community that is necessary to do that. Yet,

it gives DHHS a single point of contact to focus on that problem.

So what the Department is planning through its implementation

is to establish these Centers of Excellence in the various national

laboratories to meet your model. In our opinion, that would be applicable to other agencies who have major assets to bring to bear

on this.

Senator CLELAND. Thank you very much. Dr. Hamburg, my time

is up. Go ahead.

Dr. HAMBURG. I just wanted to underscore what Dr. Read had

said and I certainly did not want to leave the impression that I

thought the CDC could or should be in charge of the law enforcement/criminal investigation activities. But the challenge of responding to the threat of bioterrorism very much requires that

these different cultures and agencies with different missions figure

27

out ahead of time how they are going to relate to each other and

how they can support each other’s distinct missions in pursuit of

a common goal. However, when you are dealing with control of a

disease epidemic, one must be sure that the needs for disease control are clearly understood and that the criminal investigation activities do not undermine the ability of public health agencies and

medical professionals to actually do everything they can in a swift

and timely way to control spread of disease, treat individuals who

are affected, and provide preventive therapy to those who have

been exposed and are not yet sick.

I think that those activities can occur in a coordinated way, but

it really depends on intensive planning and practice so that in a

crisis, we are not thinking through these issues for the first time.

Senator CLELAND. Thank you very much, a key point, Mr. Chairman. My time is up. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Cleland. That was a

very important exchange and you gave me another quote, which I

think might be your own, ‘‘before the popcorn hits the fan.’’ It is

a good one. [Laughter.]

Senator Akaka.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Hamburg, I particularly am interested in how we can bring

things together to deal with the problem of bioterrorism. Two

months before September 11, I chaired a hearing on Federal response capabilities to bioterrorism. There were three underlying

concerns. First, the medical and hospital community needs to be

more engaged in bioterrorism planning. Second, the partnership between medical and public health professionals needs to be strengthened. And third, hospitals must have the resources to develop

surge capabilities. At that time, we talked about them halving their

staffs, and what has happened to their surge response capabilities.

My question to you is do you believe we are better off 1 year

later, and have the concerns raised at our hearing been met?

Dr. HAMBURG. I believe that we are better prepared today than

we have been in the past to address the threat of bioterrorism, but

there is still an enormous amount that we need to do and we need

to do it swiftly.

I think that there are several critical elements of a comprehensive national strategy to prevent and respond to bioterrorism. Certainly, the most desirable strategy is to prevent an event from occurring in the first place and there is more than we can do, although steps have been taken to secure dangerous materials and

to make sure that dangerous pathogens are only used in legitimate

government, industry, and academic laboratories. So there are

things we need to do to improve biosecurity.

Clearly, we need to strengthen the public health infrastructure,

including the on-the-ground disease surveillance, investigation, and

response capabilities, the laboratories needed to support those efforts, and the communication of information to all who need it.

Those disease surveillance capabilities, depend very heavily upon

the partnership between medicine and public health.

We need to make sure that our medical system can surge in response to either a bioterrorism attack or any other catastrophic

event that will involve mass casualties, and the current competitive

28

environment in which the health care system operates has led to

very significant downsizing of our health care capabilities and even

a mild flu season can overwhelm our health care facilities, let alone

a catastrophic terrorist event. So we need to really put enormous

resources and attention to that problem and look at how we can

plan to support surge, looking at local capabilities and how those

could be augmented by State and Federal resources.

We also do need to have a continuing focus on research because

that lays the foundation for future preparedness and that needs to

involve better basic understandings of the organisms that might be

threats and how the human body responds to those threats. We

need to look at threats to plants and animals as well. We need to

develop new strategies for rapid detection, new drugs, vaccines,

and we also need to look at what we sometimes call systems research. We need to better understand issues about environmental

safety and decontamination. We need to know more about how you

make buildings safe through improved ventilation systems, what

kinds of masks are really effective, etc.

So there are, I think, a number of critical domains. In many of

those areas, we have established effective programs. Most of those

programs need to be quite significantly strengthened and extended,

and in some areas, we are still at ground zero in terms of developing the policies and putting in place the programs that are needed.

Senator AKAKA. Dr. Read, as I mentioned in my statement, the

private sector has much to offer in fighting the war on terrorism.

In your experience, what has been the greatest challenge for private researchers and small businesses to become involved in homeland security countermeasures efforts?

Dr. READ. Senator, as you mentioned in your opening remarks,

there are so many stories of people that try and figure out who in

the government they should go talk to to get feedback on whether

their plan or their invention or their ideas are useful. We desperately need to identify the clearinghouse. It even has to start before that. There has to be a decisionmaker who has to have a strategy, and out of that strategy there have to be priorities, and those

priorities have to be coupled with resources so that we can create

incentives so that then the clearinghouse can actually do the work

of starting to produce the outputs that we need. So we have a lot

of work to do. I think this Department is going to help. So finding

the go-to person, that is a big part.

The other really important part, and as a venture capitalist now,

I have one of the most wonderful jobs in the world. I see entrepreneurs, inventors, college professors, and best of all, former entrepreneurs who have been successful who really know how it

works and help them think about business plans that we might

want to invest in. When we invest, we always get very involved in

helping them build their businesses.

And right now, if somebody said, look at this terrific vaccine for

Ebola, I really think we can do it, we have really figured it out,

we have had this key insight, just to pick an example, but it could

be a diagnostic or a drug, or better yet, some system where you

could respond in the midst of an epidemic, to respond to some

29

brand new threat, some kind of research tool, and we want to build

this thing.

Then when they get to the market estimate side of their business

plan, you know, the worst thing you can put in a business plan for

a venture capitalist is, ‘‘If we build it, they will come.’’ There has

to be some conviction. There has to be some evidence that whenever you built something like this, they did come.

Well, we do not have that track record right now. There is no biodefense industry—just to pick the bio area—right now because

there is no market for a biodefense industry if it were successful,

and that can be addressed.

So I think those are the two biggest issues, where do you get

feedback and guidance, what the heck are their priorities, and then

if we did hit the target, met the specification and built just what

we need, who would be there to buy it?

Senator AKAKA. You are correct. I meet with people who come to

ask, where do we go, who do we see? They hear that funding is

available but are not sure how to apply for it. These are the important questions if we are going to ensure we have the technology to

address the problems.

You and I raised the idea of a clearinghouse. We need a Research

and Development Outreach Office that encourages contributions

from small businesses and nontraditional contractors. Do you believe that such a clearinghouse should be placed in the Department

of Homeland Security?

Dr. READ. I believe that the new Department is the place where

the private sector should be able to ask their questions and get real

answers about whether they are working on the high-priority stuff

and whether there will be markets there. Whether we call it a

clearinghouse or not, I will leave that to you. But I do think that

the function that you have described the need for and I commented

on has to exist in this new Department.

Senator AKAKA. Dr. Hamburg and Ms. Heinrich, I am concerned

that Hawaii’s first responders and State and local authorities nationwide do not have access to reliable and timely information from

Federal authorities regarding terrorism.

My question is, what kind of information do public health and

emergency managers need, and what would be the best way to distribute this information in an effective and secure manner? Dr.

Heinrich.

Ms. HEINRICH. I think that at this juncture, the CDC programs

to provide assistance to the States, in fact, not only help build the

infrastructure for reporting of diseases from the State and local

areas to the Federal Government, they are also building communications systems so that information can go from the Federal Government quickly down to the State and local area and also to physicians and emergency rooms.

We found out from our experiences with anthrax, for example,

that there was not a clear message from the Federal Government

about what the threat was and also what the possible treatment

should be, or if somebody thought they were exposed, what they

were to do. I think that with the programs now put in place from

CDC, there is a real opportunity to correct those problems.

30

I do want to add on to what Dr. Hamburg said before, though,

about State and local preparedness, which includes Hawaii. We are

not there yet. Certainly, we are much more aware, but in our work

in doing an assessment of State and local preparedness and also

in our work right now on assessing emergency room crowding, we

are finding that the people at the local level are planning. They are

making assessments, or they will be making assessments of their

needs.

They are not necessarily yet in the implementation mode and I

just think that is really important for us to understand as we are

trying to develop new policies and consolidate programs. We really

do need to understand that our best information is going to be coming from the State and local areas and they still need a lot of assistance in bringing their systems up to where they need to be.

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Chairman, I know my time has run out, but

I have another question or two.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Go right ahead, Senator Akaka. We have

got time.

Senator AKAKA. Let me ask a question to Dr. Madia. The President’s proposal states, ‘‘the technologies developed must not only

make us safer but also make our lives better. While protecting

against the rare event, they should also enhance the commonplace.’’

Dr. Madia, do you believe the Department of Homeland Security

can reduce everyday low-consequence risks while focusing on catastrophic terrorism?

Dr. MADIA. That is a very important question, because as a Nation and as a Department, it is unfortunate, but we cannot protect

against every threat, every day, of every consequence, and that is

a reality we have to deal with in this country. I know we would

like to be able to deal with that and give the public 100 percent

assurance that low-consequence, low-profile events will be taken

care of, but that is simply not the fact. That cannot happen.

So no department can do that because it would take unlimited

resources to do that. So functionally, the answer has to be, of

course, we could. But operationally and practically, it is never

going to happen that way. One of the sad problems we face as a

Nation right now is that there are lots of localized low-consequence

events that this Department or any construct of government will

not be able to deal with.

Dr. READ. Could I just comment on that?

Senator AKAKA. Please.

Dr. READ. First of all, I would urge that the mission for this new

Department be really clear and that we not saddle it with traffic

safety, which is, of course, much bigger on an annual basis, current

harm to our population than the actualized terrorist attacks, but

we should keep the mission as clear as we can.

But we should also look for the opportunities, which will be

many, I believe, to exploit the beneficial dual use of investments

in technology and infrastructure. When we improve our infrastructure, for example, I was at a meeting of some California public

health officials soon after September 11 and we had public health

officers exchanging cell phone numbers with fire officials. These

people did not have them. The databases did not exist for that.

31

So creating infrastructure to deal with a rapid response to detect

certain kind of attacks like bio and more obvious attacks, we are

going to create infrastructures that absolutely help us with the

day-to-day, with emergency response and that very important network. That is going to be a consequence.

The technology we build in the form of new drugs and vaccines

and new research tools will undoubtedly have spin-off results in

some cases. We have to be prepared to do the stuff that does not,

as well.

So I see a lot of benefit, but I would not want to in any way saddle the mission with anything other than a really clear focus on

this newly recognized and focused problem of homeland security.

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Chairman, I have one final question.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Please, go right ahead.

Senator AKAKA. Since we are talking about communication, Dr.

Hamburg, as a public health official, you know the important role

that veterinarians play in disease control. How do we increase communication among the Nation’s veterinarians, medical doctors, and

public health officials? Even more important, and let me ask this

question, would the President’s proposal do this?

Dr. HAMBURG. I think, as we have learned from many naturally

occurring events and now thinking about the threat of bioterrorism,

we recognize that we have been too stovepiped in approaches and

that we really need to engage the veterinary community. Particularly with respect to bioterrorism, many of the diseases, the pathogens of greatest concern are, in fact, animal diseases that can affect

humans. And in addition, we certainly know that even without the

loss of one human life, the enormous disruption and economic devastation that could occur from an attack on animals or crops would

be a very effective strategy for a determined terrorist.

So we need to look at it. We need to broaden our thinking. I

think you asked me before, are we better prepared? I think in most

elements of response to bioterrorism, we have been moving forward. We are not anywhere near where we need to be. But one of

the areas where we have lagged the furthest behind is engaging on

the threats of agricultural terrorism and it needs to be a major priority.

In terms of engaging the veterinary medicine community in particular, it starts with awareness. They need information. They need

to be brought into existing systems and programs. They need to be

at the table when the others are at the table discussing this problem and we need to develop the working relationships and situational awareness that will allow for a more comprehensive approach.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, I just wanted to inject that the terrorist threat is also to our livestock.

Ms. Heinrich, as Dr. Madia has said, we are faced with new

risks. We cannot protect ourselves from every threat that comes.

How do we make the general public aware of this new reality while

maintaining their confidence?

Ms. HEINRICH. I think this is a role that public health officials

can play in terms of educating the public and making sure that we

have programs that help people understand what are the real

risks, and what are the potential threats. It is not easy, because

32

I think the messages are complicated. I think that people really do

need to understand that infectious diseases are real, emerging infectious diseases are real and that they need to be aware of their

pet’s health as well as the health of themselves and their children

and they need to know that it is no longer just the chronic diseases

that we need to be concerned about but that we do need to be

thinking about infectious diseases. And they need information on

what to do, what they should do in terms of seeing their physician

or primary care provider or the need to even go to the emergency

room.

In response to your question to Dr. Hamburg, I think it is important for us to understand that, again, in the President’s proposal,

there are some efforts there to bring in some aspects of the Department of Agriculture and there is discussion of food safety, which,

of course, involves veterinary health. But again, you have to ask

yourself the question, or we have to ask ourselves the question if

the approach that is used is necessarily the best one to make sure

that you have the coordination of effort that you want.

I would just emphasize again that the real critical components

are that you have that strategic plan and that you do have the opportunity for risk assessment, but there are a variety of methods

for coordination of these overarching scientific programs.

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Chairman, you have been very generous

with the time, and I thank you and our witnesses.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Not at all.

Senator AKAKA. I will submit my other questions.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Akaka. I appreciate your

questions very much. I do have a few more questions myself. Let

me come back to what one of you nicely called the boxology part

of this, because that is where our work begins, but hopefully, our

work and the work of the government does not end there.

One of the key questions raised is—assuming for a moment, we

set up a Science and Technology Office in the new Department— what comes under it and where the funding streams go. The administration’s proposal kicked up a fair amount of dust and anxiety

by seeming in the first instance to take all of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and put it into the Department, and then parts

of NIH. As it turned out, as there has been clarification or adjustment, it seems that part of Lawrence Livermore and NIH are involved. Specifically, while the money for the personnel and the research goes through the Department of Homeland Security Science

and Technology Office, the people stay at the laboratory and NIH.

I still think there is a lot of anxiety, certainly, from members of

the Senate who are close to, for example, these two institutions or

agencies, NIH and Livermore. I wanted to ask you, so far as any

of you want to respond, and we could begin with Dr. Madia, since

you represent another laboratory, what your reaction is.

The other alternative here clearly is not to do that and to create

an additional funding stream, an agency—I am calling it SARPA—

within the Homeland Security Department which would set the

goals and agenda for science and technology with regard to homeland security, have additional funding, hopefully, of its own, but

not in any sense move personnel or money from the existing agencies.

33

So I want to invite your reaction to both of those, Dr. Branscomb,

and then we will come right back to Dr. Madia.

Dr. BRANSCOMB. Thank you. As I said earlier, I think what is essential when we are looking at the R&D activities, that the technical talent for the moment, at least—and by moment, I mean the

next year or two, until this Department is a reality and can function, in fact, stay where it is.

The key to being able to do that is, in fact, to ensure that it can

be funded where it is and that the agency undertake commitments,

program commitments, that are responsive to a technical strategy

for homeland security. The Department should be the principal origin for that strategy. But since the strategy clearly calls for other

departments of the government to commit their resources or their

people, their talents and their capabilities to the effort, that decision has to get made at the Executive Office of the President level.

And I would like, if I may, to comment on the proposal in your

bill to create a National Office for Combating Terrorism, because

you have not only identified the necessity for that strategy being

constructed, you have, in fact, equipped this statutory office with

quite a number of authorities which would ensure, if it were accepted, it would ensure that it had a major role in the preparation

of this governmentwide budget for counterterrorism which OMB

then would have to work into the rest of the government program.

I suspect that there will be people, OMB executives present and

former, who will object to that much legislative effort in the budget

process in the White House, but I think you are absolutely after

the right goal. I would call attention to the fact that the President’s

bill makes no mention whatever of how a national strategy is going

to be put together that would engage on line items, budget items,

at Commerce, at NIH, at Energy, where they commit to do things,

to give reports to the Department, but they have got the money,

they are responsible for it, and they know how to spend the money

fruitfully.

I suspect the reason why the President’s bill does not contain any

mention of that is because the President did, in fact, when he announced his intention to promote the Department, noted there

would still need to be an Office of Homeland Security at the White

House.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right.

Dr. BRANSCOMB. And, indeed, he recognizes that. I also suspect

that he did not put it in the bill because he does not want it to

be a legislated office.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is also correct. That is clear.

Dr. BRANSCOMB. Because he can appoint it without having to

have Congress’s permission.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right, no advice and consent or a requirement to testify before Congress.

Dr. BRANSCOMB. But my concern is that because it is not mentioned—also, there is very little in the President’s bill about how

that global strategy would even be worked on in the Department.

But I think that capability is crucial to not seizing the research capability and putting it in the—all of it and trying to put it in the

Department.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Dr. Madia.

34

Dr. MADIA. Mr. Chairman, when I heard you initially describe

the SARPA concept, what immediately came to mind was this

Homeland Security Center at Livermore, which is intended to be

a DARPA-like organization. It would understand the needs of the

various customers of this agency and would fund, like DARPA does,

research at various institutions, including the laboratories, bring

that back and provide that to the Nation. So I did not hear from

a functional standpoint much difference between——

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is interesting. So you would say that

part of Livermore might do what we are thinking——

Dr. MADIA. As far as I understand what is in this proposal, functionally, when you were speaking this morning, that is what immediately came to mind.

And from an R&D provider standpoint, that is very common. National laboratories work across the full range of government. Our

customers include DOD, DOE, EPA, NASA, HHS, CDC, and so

there are already providers which are scattered around the country, are ready, willing, and able, as Senator Akaka mentioned, to

bring their talents to bear on this problem. What they need, as Dr.

Read pointed out, was a single point of contact, whether it is

SARPA or the proposed Center at Livermore, to me, that meets

that functional need.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right.

Dr. MADIA. The second point of your question, it was not as if

government was not doing anything at all on homeland security.

Spread across government agencies, including the Department of

Energy, were certain programs that one would look at from a national perspective and say, this looks like a counterterrorism or a

bioterrorism or a counter-nuclear weapons activity, and those kinds

of transfers, I think now are appropriate, because they would be

core, programmatically, core to this new Department, in whatever

incarnation it ends up.

There are many places where there is a dual-technology application, where the benefit would go to CDC and DHS. In my opinion,

those are best left in their home institutions through these Centers

of Excellence we talked about earlier with Senator Cleland.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Dr. Branscomb, the Committee which just

made its report earlier this week recommended the creation of a

Homeland Security Institute. Now, why have another institution

different from the Science and Technology Office, however it is constructed, that we are talking about in the new Department of

Homeland Security?

Dr. BRANSCOMB. The reason is that this supposed institute supports the decisionmaking, the strategic decisionmaking by the chief

technical officer and the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of the Department. It plays exactly the same role—for Homeland Security

that organizations like Mitre Corporation, Aerospace Corporation,

Project Rare Force at RAND, the Institute for Defense Analysis

play in support of defense. These are all contractor-operated dedicated facilities to a single customer. They work only for that customer. And what they do is systems analysis, they analyze the

problems. These are very complex systems problems.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right.

35

Dr. BRANSCOMB. When you look at infrastructure and its vulnerabilities, one section of the infrastructure, if it collapses brings

down the next one. These are complex problems and setting the

priorities is not a trivial problem. And indeed, if the industry comes

in and says, ‘‘I have got a great idea, is there a market for it in

the government?’’ You cannot answer that question unless you

have done this kind of systems analytic work.

So it does not need to be a very big organization. I would guess

200 to 300 people. We did not try to size it specifically. But I think

that the authority to create it is absolutely essential.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. OK. That helps me understand it better.

Let me go back to the dialogue with Senator Cleland, and I want

to direct the question first to Dr. Hamburg, but Ms. Heinrich and

others may have an opinion on it. As you know, the Department

of Health and Human Services responded to last year’s anthrax attacks by forming the Office of Public Health Preparedness, which

coordinates all departmental efforts to combat terrorism within

HHS, including managing the public health care required during

an attack and directing research efforts to fight bioterrorism.

The President’s proposal would transfer this entire office to the

new Department. I wanted to ask you all, and first Dr. Hamburg,

based on your personal experience, what you think of the idea, particularly given the dual role of the office to manage public health

readiness and advise the Secretary on biomedical research issues.

Can it operate effectively outside of HHS?

Dr. HAMBURG. I think that the creation of an Office of Public

Health Preparedness within HHS was a very important and appropriate step. Actually, it was a recommendation of the outgoing administration to create such an office, recognizing that there really

needed to be much more focused attention and coordination on

issues of public health preparedness, particularly bioterrorism. Also

there was a requirement—just as we have been talking about with

respect to the creation of a Department of Homeland Security—to

make sure that all of the components of response and preparedness

for HHS were, in fact, being addressed; that there was a strategic

framework and that someone was accountable for making sure that

there was a comprehensive, integrated program, and that budget

priorities reflected that strategic framework. The best way to do

that was with an Office of Public Health Preparedness so that the

needs of CDC, NIH, FDA, and other important components of HHS

responsibility and public health preparedness and response could

all be addressed and accounted for.

Taking that and moving it lock, stock, and barrel to a Department of Homeland Security, I think is problematic because it will

disconnect many important functions that have broader public

health preparedness roles from those that are more directly related

to bioterrorism preparedness. That is of enormous concern to me,

because of my bias that I have stated here that, really, the only

way to effectively address these concerns is to think about the continuum of infectious disease threats with bioterrorism being at the

extreme end.

Certainly, there are elements of public health preparedness and

response that are cross-cutting. The needs to support mass casualty

care are very important to integrate closely with the functions of

36

a new Department of Homeland Security, for example. And so I

think that there are components of the HHS public health preparedness response that can be pulled out and integrated into a

new Department of Homeland Security, but I think one has to take

a very systematic look at those elements and the functions they

support and where they can best be housed.

If this new Department of Homeland Security is effectively defining homeland security quite broadly, and I think this is one of the

dilemmas that you face, then those functions could find a comfortable and natural home. If all of FEMA is now part of the new

Department of Homeland Security so that the emergency response

functions of FEMA are all being managed within that new Department, then I think you really almost need to integrate some of

those components from HHS into that framework. But I think that

the elements that support the public health infrastructure and response at the national, State, and local level are much harder to

label as, this is bioterrorism related or this is homeland security

related and move it, because it is part of a much more broad-based

and complex system for public health in this Nation.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is a very helpful answer.

Let me take us beyond the boxology now into what this is all

about, which is maybe to give us a little bit of a sense of what

science and technology can, in the years ahead, do to help us in the

war against terrorism.

I am going to start with you, Dr. Madia. Actually, Senator

Thompson left a few questions for you. Most of them have been

asked, but this one has not and it is a good way to lead in and then

I will go to Dr. Read or anyone else who wants to comment.

First, if you can describe some of the work being done at Oak

Ridge now that either is already related to homeland security or

might be in the next couple of years.

Dr. MADIA. I thank you. Your question can be answered in three

basic time domains, what we can do today and has been done

today, an intermediate term, and a long term. Fortunately, there

is a lot of activity today that is directly applicable to homeland security.

In a really exciting program that connects both the laboratory

and private sector in Oak Ridge, we are developing a concept called

SensorNet. SensorNet literally uses the existing cell phone tower

infrastructure, which is ubiquitous across the United States. Those

towers in public buildings and post offices have an interesting capability that we do not think of in terms of homeland security.

They have the power and the telemetry necessary to transmit early

warnings to first responders on a very, very short time frame.

We have successfully demonstrated this technology now both in

Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville, Tennessee, where you just

hang on cell phone towers chemical, biological, nuclear detectors,

and they are just prolific. You tend not to see them, but they are

in high population densities.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. You mean they are constantly sending out

reports over the system?

Dr. MADIA. Senator, what we found is that these towers are in

constant contact with emergency operations centers used by the

private sector in their normal cell phone communication, full

37

diagnostics. If you would break into a cell phone tower, it is known

immediately at the emergency operation centers by these cell

phone companies. They are in constant contact, literally.

So, therefore, if you hang a radiological sensors on a downtown

cell phone tower and it begins to pick up a mass release, very

quickly, you can begin to transmit, not to national lab folks, but to

first responders, something is happening in downtown Washington.

Here is the meteorological data, which is also available on those

towers. Here is the evacuation path.

So there is a lot of very near-term, actually quite pedestrian

technologies that are, in fact, available today for deployment, and

these are some of the concepts the new Department needs to look

at as it does its triage on the thousands of ideas in front of it.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is a great idea. Let me make sure

I understand. The radiological testing device or sensor would immediately convey a report. It is not just that something went off,

it would send——

Dr. MADIA. It gives you a concentration——

Chairman LIEBERMAN [continuing]. Some data across the wires,

or across the wireless.

Dr. MADIA. The reason I used the radiation example is because

in those cases, the sensor technology is far more sophisticated there

than you have in the chemical and the biological arenas. So you do

not have such ability to give you such absolute accurate information on the biological side as you do primarily on the chemical and

nuclear side.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Dr. HAMBURG. Can I just interject? I may have misunderstood,

but I think it would be a very dangerous concept to pursue sensors

that would immediately send information about a possible attack

to first responders. There needs to be a mechanism to assess the

quality of the information, whether it is radiological, chemical, or

biological detection, and confirms that the threat is real and

verified and then provides the first responders the information that

they need for how to respond.

Certainly, you want to get quick information that is an early

warning that something may be out there, but I think the goal is

not to create a system that sort of immediately beams information

out without any quality control. We know certainly from the anthrax experience that our technologies just are not there. Maybe

some day that would be great, and certainly going into a threat situation, you want first responders to be equipped with something

that will tell them of a possible threat so they can protect themselves, but——

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes. But you are saying that——

Dr. MADIA. Dr. Hamburg’s comments are actually correct.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right.

Dr. MADIA. When the demonstrations were actually done in Tennessee, the information first went to the Tennessee Emergency Operations Center, and then was qualified by the EOC directors of the

State. Then they went through the first responder alert.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. But the important point you are stating

is that here is a resource that you could build on to——

38

Dr. MADIA. The Federal Government, by the way, could never invest in it. You would never rebuild the national cell phone tower

network, with 30,000 towers around the country.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. No, it is a good example. Anything else?

Dr. MADIA. That exists currently in the private sector and this

is a good partnership between government needs and private sector

needs, and so it is a good example for that.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good idea.

Dr. MADIA. But you are absolutely correct. You filter the data, do

the analysis, and do not just call some fire department and say, go

north.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Do you want to give us another example?

Dr. MADIA. What you see on the energy side—one of our big longterm problems is the fragility of the energy grid in this country. It

is taken down by natural events, quite often. Some very interesting

technology——

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Do you consider Enron to be a natural

event? [Laughter.]

Dr. MADIA. Unfortunately, it is a very unnatural event.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is another part of this Committee’s

work. We will leave it aside for now.

Dr. MADIA. This whole concept of self-healing energy grids is

coming out of multiple national laboratories. If a main part of the

grid goes down, through smart technologies that run all the way

from the power stations to your refrigerator, they can literally now

begin to sense a problem on the grid as it is occurring, can begin

to shut down certain parts of the grid and reroute power.

There are certain printers, I am sure you have in your office,

that today can sense an upcoming problem on the printer for your

computer and send a signal back to some command post saying

your printer is about to go out. Those same kind of technologies are

clearly deployable in our energy infrastructure over the next 5 to

10 years. That is a really long-term example of the kind of technologies that are applicable.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Great. Dr. Madia.

Dr. MADIA. One quick comment. A lot of our discussion today has

been about the bio threat, and I do not mean to diminish the bio

threat at all.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Sure.

Dr. MADIA. But it would be a huge mistake for us to ignore or

not give sufficient attention to the nuclear threat. Now, again, we

are the national laboratories and we play a substantial role there.

But the unfortunate reality of nuclear threats is the materials

exist, the science exists, and the technology exists. A weapon that

could sit on this table could completely devastate a major U.S. city.

And yes, we should talk about threats to agriculture, chemical

threats, biological threats, anthrax threats, but in reality, this Department, I think this government, has to deal with the extraordinary consequences possible if a terrorist coming out of a country

that has the assets available tries to deploy or use a nuclear weapon.

So there is a lot of talk about biology this morning. It is very important, but it would be a huge mistake for us not to explicitly deal

with the overwhelming consequences of a nuclear event.

39

Chairman LIEBERMAN. And here, you are not talking about a nuclear weapon delivered by a ballistic missile, or are you?

Dr. MADIA. I am not, and I am not talking about a radiation

weapon, either, which has certain consequences. I am talking about

a low-yield, a poorly-developed nuclear device. Take the technology

deployed from the Manhattan Project, very pedestrian technology.

If someone has the right kind of material, and that is the central

issue here, but access to that material unfortunately is in question,

especially in the former Soviet Union, those kind of threats, to me,

are the kind of enormous consequence threats that the American

public expects this government to deal with.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right. And here, we are talking about

something being brought in in a suitcase or on a truck or——

Dr. MADIA. A poorly-constructed low-yield device is deployable in

at least a truck.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Are the labs doing work on——

Dr. MADIA. Absolutely. My point was, there was a lot of biology

talk this morning.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. No, understood. Good point.

Dr. MADIA. It is still very important, but——

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Dr. Branscomb.

Dr. BRANSCOMB. I agree with his assessment that that is the critical risk. The level of the risk is 100 percent, if you believe that

the terrorists can come by the appropriate, relatively modest

amount of highly enriched uranium. We know that if they can, they

can get it in the country. There is no way now we could stop it.

And if they get it in the country, they can rent a loft in downtown

Manhattan and in a relatively short time assemble a nuclear weapon out of that material. It is well known how to do that. It will not

be very efficient, but it will kill tens of thousands of people, if not

more.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Dr. BRANSCOMB. What can the government do about that? There

is almost nothing R&D will do about that, but there is something

to do. It is terribly important. We have an arrangement right now

with the Russians in which they are cooperating with us on our

helping finance the cost of taking their hundreds of tons of highly

enriched uranium sitting there in storage. It is well protected

where it is now, but they have agreed to reprocess some of that

material down to where there is only 20 percent enrichment level.

It cannot be made into a weapon at that level, and that is fairly

cheap to do. Later on, you can improve its concentration sufficient

for use in a power plant, but still will not be able to make a nuclear weapon.

That is a case where the Russians are willing to work now. If the

government does not put up the money and complete the program

while they are playing the game, we will regret it for the rest of

our lives.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. There is a lot of support here for what

started out as the Nunn-Lugar program of cooperative threat reduction. There was some uneasiness about this administration’s

initial response to it. It looked like it was going to cut back support. But I think we are turning that around, and that is critically

important.

40

I presume one of the other things science and technology might

do is to increase our capacity to detect when uranium might be

brought in by a container—— Dr. BRANSCOMB. We should certainly work at that, but it is very

difficult to do because the materials are not very radioactive and

they are easy to shield.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. We have had testimony here that one percent of the containers coming into the country are opened or

checked in any way, mostly through paperwork, and not even

opened.

Dr. MADIA. Detecting those kinds of materials is far easier than

detecting the precursors to chemical or biological weapons.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Dr. MADIA. It is not easy, but it is far easier there than it is on

chemical and biological.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Dr. Read, talk to us a little about the

state of activity in the private sector today. I know you are focused

particularly on biotechnology responses. A new industry may

emerge from this crisis which might be called the biodefense industry.

But it is my impression both in this area, biodefense, but also in

a whole host of other areas, that proposals are coming through the

door to us about biometric devices to check people coming in

through airports, for instance, etc. Part of this is the good old

healthy American spirit of entrepreneurship, that this is a need,

this is a new market, and so people want to be part of it, part of

it because of profit motive, part of it patriotism. Am I seeing this

correctly, and what kinds of activities are you seeing in your field

that already hold some hope to protect the security of the American

people here at home?

Dr. READ. Well, clearly in the last 9 months, Senator, there has

been a lot of new excitement about how people could apply technology they have already been working on to some of these problems, and we have already discussed the confusion that follows

from trying to find a customer for that.

DARPA, by the way, is a marvelous model for funding high-risk

early-stage work. I have had some fair interaction with them and

various individuals there. It is a good team. They have a great culture to do this, and they have something else that I hope if you create SARPA that you will endow it with, which is a freedom to operate away from the unbelievably burdensome procurement rules

that are part of most defense procurement. And so they have this

other category. I do not know all the names here, but you know

what I am speaking about. This is terribly important for small

companies that cannot invest in all the infrastructure to comply

with the FARs and the various rules. So that would be worthwhile.

It should also be noted that the folks at DARPA often, at least

in private, will express some concern that their customer, the DOD,

when they throw a successful DARPA-sponsored research project

over the wall that they do not even hear the splash on the other

side. We should be careful not to focus on the process of getting a

bunch of research started in these areas without very careful

thought about who the customer is, the kind of deployment issues

that were just discussed about the radiation sensors, for example,

41

and also about how much of this ought to be done in the government and how much ought to be done in the private sector.

The ground has been laid in the case of countermeasures against

specific biological agents based on huge and successful investments

in the basic science, underlying virology and microbiology, largely

at and through the NIH. We have fabulous groundwork. It is our

unique asset in terms of being able to deal with this. We really are

prepared to then start translating that into specific vaccines for the

highest risk threats, highest in terms of their availability, the

agents’ availability to the bad guys, highest in terms of their

deployability, and highest in terms of their potential to cause panic

and economic disruption because they are transmissible, for example, as opposed to a non-transmissible agent.

So I am quite optimistic, and I have seen research programs targeting many of these animal pathogens or pathogens of people who

live in the poorest parts of the world where we have the beginnings

of programs that could be accelerated. Much of what is going to

need to happen and most of the dollars to actually have something

in a vial that could be drawn up in a syringe or given by a nasal

spray or one of these other approaches is in the application research, the applied research, development research, the creation of

manufacturing facilities, and so on, and that has historically been

successful in the private sector and not as a function of the direct

government facility or under government direct internal control,

and so we need to organize for that. That is an important part that

is missing right now, is the market signals that would justify the

flow of private capital to finish the job.

I am also very encouraged about high-risk, far-out ideas, which

Dr. Hamburg might want to comment on the plausibility of. In the

middle of an epidemic—perhaps you remember the movie ‘‘Outbreak,’’ where Dustin Hoffman manages to get some serum from

this fictional primate that is spreading the outbreak and something

magical happens in test tubes and columns and stuff and they get

a serum that he gives to his girlfriend in the movie and she survives.

Well, Don Francis, who is one of our great AIDS researchers and

discoverers, advised on that movie and he took me through it.

Every part of that is unproven, but it is not completely implausible

that we could develop tools that would allow a rapid response. We

should not set expectations too high. These are long-term ideas.

But, I see unbelievable stuff every day in business plans from very

plausible, credible scientists related to biology and high technology.

We do need to invest in some of that. We need to make it clear that

there will be a market if we are successful.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. And this Department can send out some

signals and give some incentives that would do that.

Just to go back, what you are foreseeing is an age in which we

are all going to be looking to take a vaccine that will protect us

preventively. We are not just talking about treatment once, God

forbid, a chemical or biological attack occurs, but to prevent it

proactively.

Dr. READ. These are complex threats that are going to roll out

with more and more sophistication over many years as our opponents gain more technology, sophistication, and as state-sponsored

42

resources come to bear. We need things that can be held in reserve

for the worst possible case.

These may be products we would never dream of giving people

under times of low threat. They may be vaccines or drugs with very

high side effects, very serious mortality rates that we would never

tolerate, but we want them in the stockpile. In fact, we may even

want them forward deployed so on a hair trigger we could get protected.

We may need to have things that are right out there available,

and there may be threat levels, for example, in which we rethink

the recent decision, which I would agree with, that we not vaccinate with the smallpox vaccine. But we can imagine a threat

level, and maybe even future generations of smallpox vaccines that

are so safe that the right thing to do is go ahead and immunize

the population.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Sure.

Dr. READ. So it cannot be scattered throughout DOD and HHS

and all these other departments. This new Department has to be

the focus for getting the interplay between the characteristics of a

particular countermeasure, its risks and benefits and pragmatic

deployability, whether it needs freezers to be stored and so on, balanced with the——

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I find this exciting and also reassuring. I

think part of our responsibility as leaders now is to be reassuring

and part of our capacity to do that is to bring our enormous science

and technology prowess to bear on these problems.

I do not know if anybody else wants to give us a response. We

always like to end optimistically.

Dr. BRANSCOMB. I would just like to pick up on this last point,

because I believe that one of the keys to the success of this enterprise is to adopt a technology strategy that does, in fact, look for

the concurrent development of technologies that do address the

homeland security threat and at the same time either enable you

to do that much cheaper than anybody thought you could, or equally important, provide civil benefits, just as, indeed, improving the

public health capability will do.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Sure.

Dr. BRANSCOMB. Our report gives a lot of examples of that. One

of the reasons why I think that is very important is because there

is another role for industry here. Industry owns and operates almost all the systems that are the vulnerable systems in the country, with the single exception of the cities. So they have to worry

about being attacked as well as the fact that they do, in fact, do

three-quarters of the Nation’s R&D and clearly are a major asset

there. If they are going to be the targets, why have they not made

themselves less vulnerable? Answer: There is no market for being

less vulnerable than they are. They are at equilibrium with the

business justifications.

And so there has to be a partnership between the government

and those industries that will cause those, in some cases, very glaring vulnerabilities to be addressed collaboratively. Obviously, we

can regulate them into doing it. We do not want to do any more

of that than we have to. We could bribe them into doing it. We

surely do not want to do that. So what is left, other than maybe

43

some antitrust provisions that might be possible that would allow

an entire industry sector to get together with the government

present and discuss what they are all going to do voluntarily.

But the other interesting one is the role of the insurance industry. I do not know if that has been brought to the Committee’s

attention—— Chairman LIEBERMAN. No.

Dr. BRANSCOMB [continuing]. But it is already true. I know people who are in the profession. They are engineers and technical experts in vulnerability analysis and risk analysis who are consulting

with insurance companies who are now setting their rates so that

the rate of the insurance depends on the extent to which the customer has, in fact, dealt with some of these terrorist vulnerabilities. But getting that technically correct is a big job, not just

from individual consultants. That is, in fact, the job for the full

brainpower of this Department.

But there is an opportunity here for three-way collaboration between the technical capacity of the government that understands

the risks and the likelihood of various technological ways of minimizing them, the insurance industry that can be the vehicle for

translating that into a legitimate market force, and the industry

itself that needs to buy that insurance.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Very interesting, and it is optimistic because I will carry that news right back to Hartford with me.

[Laughter.]

I thank you all. You have been a very informed, constructive and

helpful panel. We would like to keep in touch with you over the

next couple of weeks as we begin to draft our bill.

I am going to leave the record of this hearing open for 10 days,

if any of you would like to submit additional testimony for the

record or if any of my colleagues who could not be here today want

to submit questions to you.

In the meantime, I thank you. I wish you a good weekend. The

hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:06 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

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Æ