Text of the Report - p. 2

[johnkarls]

Executive Summary

Russia and the United States

Of all America’s interests involving Russia, none is more vital than
reducing the risk of the accidental or intentional use of nuclear and biological weapons against our nation and its allies from a source in Russia.

As great powers with divergent interests, the United States and
Russia inevitably will have disagreements. But both governments have
a responsibility to prevent these disagreements from interfering with
their critical mutual interests—preventing the proliferation and use of
nuclear and biological weapons and keeping WMD out of the hands of
terrorists. The two countries also have a common interest in pursuing
further strategic nuclear reductions.

RECOMMENDATION 7: The next U.S. administration
should work with the Russian government on initiatives to
jointly reduce the danger of the use of nuclear and biological
weapons, including by (1) extending some of the essential verification and monitoring provisions of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that are scheduled to expire in 2009; (2) advancing
cooperation programs such as the Global Initiative to Combat
Nuclear Terrorism, United Nations Security Council Resolution
1540, and the Proliferation Security Initiative; (3) sustaining
security upgrades at sensitive sites in Russia and elsewhere,
while finding common ground on further reductions in stockpiles of excess highly enriched uranium; (4) jointly encouraging
China, Pakistan, and India to announce a moratorium on the
further production of nuclear fissile materials for nuclear
weapons and to reduce existing nuclear military deployments
and stockpiles; and (5) offering assistance to other nations, such
as Pakistan and India, in achieving nuclear confidence-building
measures similar to those that the United States and the USSR
followed for most of the Cold War.

Government Organization and Culture

Although in 2004 the two major party presidential candidates agreed
that the biggest threat to the United States was WMD terrorism, today

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there is still no single high-level individual or office responsible for
directing U.S. policy to prevent WMD proliferation and terrorism. The
Commission is also concerned that in numerous cases in which policy
trade-offs were required, nonproliferation was viewed as a secondary
security issue. It is critical to have a senior official with direct access to
the President to direct and promote nonproliferation interests.

This shortcoming is compounded by the fact that the President’s
policymaking on WMD proliferation and terrorism is overseen by two
parallel staffs—one team working for the National Security Council
(NSC) and the other working for the Homeland Security Council
(HSC). Senior officials must deal with time-consuming meetings and
overlapping responsibilities. The greatest threat to our nation is managed across many offices, rather than by one high-level office dedicated to this single issue.

RECOMMENDATION 8: The President should create a
more efficient and effective policy coordination structure by
designating a White House principal advisor for WMD proliferation and terrorism and restructuring the National Security
Council and Homeland Security Council.

°°°
While Congress has been forceful in demanding reform of the executive branch, it has been slow to heed calls from others to reform
itself. Prior commissions, including the 9/11 Commission, have called
for reforming congressional committee jurisdiction and oversight. Congress has made some initial progress, yet much more needs to be done.

Consistent with findings of the 9/11 Commission and other previous commissions, congressional oversight remains dysfunctional. The
existing committee structure does not allow for effective oversight of
crosscutting national security threats, such as WMD proliferation and
terrorism.

RECOMMENDATION 9: Congress should reform its
oversight both structurally and substantively to better address
intelligence, homeland security, and crosscutting 21st-century
national security missions such as the prevention of weapons
of mass destruction proliferation and terrorism.

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°°°

In response to the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act
of 2004, the intelligence community is implementing the most sweeping organizational changes since 1947. The community has achieved
significant progress in a relatively short period of time and is currently
engaged in a number of promising internal initiatives. Every effort
should be made to accelerate those reforms. However, under the circumstances, the Commission believes that Congress and the administration should oversee and observe the results of current efforts before
initiating further organizational change, though such changes might
well be necessary in the future. One area should be the focus of special
effort: the intelligence community still has insufficient personnel who
have the critical skills needed to improve our nation’s effort to stop proliferators and terrorists.

RECOMMENDATION 10: Accelerate integration of effort
among the counterproliferation, counterterrorism, and law
enforcement communities to address WMD proliferation and
terrorism issues; strengthen expertise in the nuclear and biological fields; prioritize pre-service and in-service training and
retention of people with critical scientific, language, and foreign area skills; and ensure that the threat posed by biological
weapons remains among the highest national intelligence priorities for collection and analysis.

°°°
Despite recent initiatives, the national security agencies, including the
national laboratories, still lack the flexibility and workforce culture they
need to attract, train, and retain individuals with the skills necessary to
effectively respond to globalized, networked threats.

RECOMMENDATION 11: The United States must build a
national security workforce for the 21st century.

°°°
While the United States has had success in eliminating a number of
terrorist leaders and foiling planned attacks, our government has

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invested less effort, let alone enjoyed success, at preventing the global
recruitment and ideological commitment of extremists who might seek
to use nuclear or biological weapons against America or its allies. These
efforts demand an approach far different from that used to capture or
kill terrorists and facilitators. They require the tools of soft power,
which include the ability to communicate persuasively about American
intentions and to assist in promoting social and economic progress
within those countries where the terrorists have a recruiting presence.
Government agencies must think creatively to develop and coordinate
efforts—ranging from strategic communications to targeted development assistance—to engage those who might otherwise be drawn to
terrorist causes.

RECOMMENDATION 12: U.S. counterterrorism strategy
must more effectively counter the ideology behind WMD terrorism. The United States should develop a more coherent
and sustained strategy and capabilities for global ideological
engagement to prevent future recruits, supporters, and facilitators.

The Role of the Citizen

A well informed and mobilized citizenry has long been one of our
nation’s greatest resources. The next administration therefore should,
within six months, work with state and local governments to develop
a checklist of actions that need to be taken to improve efforts at all
levels of government to prevent WMD proliferation and terrorism.
Citizens should hold their governments accountable for completing
this checklist.

Insufficient effort has been made to engage the public in the prevention of WMD terrorism, even though public tips have provided
clues necessary to disrupt terrorist plots against the homeland. We
need to give our citizens guidance on what to expect from their government at all levels and on how to be engaged in the prevention of WMD
terrorism.

RECOMMENDATION 13: The next administration must
work to openly and honestly engage the American citizen,

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encouraging a participatory approach to meeting the chal

lenges of the new century.

°°°
We decided at the beginning of our deliberations that we would be
direct and honest with the American people about the challenges we
confront. That is why we have not hesitated to state our conclusion that
America’s margin of safety against a WMD attack is shrinking. But we
also want to assure the people that there is ample and solid ground for
hope about the future. Our leaders—whatever their differences over
domestic issues—are united in their desire to safeguard our country.
The vast majority of the world’s peoples stand with us in wanting to
prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction and to defeat terrorists. Our nation has immense reservoirs of strength that we have only
begun to use, and our enemies have weaknesses that we are learning
how to exploit. There is much more that we can do to protect ourselves. In this report we lay out the steps that need to be taken, with
confidence that they will be taken, and that as a result the United
States, leading the international community, will have enhanced the
safety of our world at risk.

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Biological and Nuclear Risks

The greatest danger of another catastrophic attack in the United
States will materialize if the world’s most dangerous terrorists
acquire the world’s most dangerous weapons.

—The 9/11 Commission Report



Biological Risks

They were agents on a mission and they came not at night, which might
have looked suspicious, but in broad daylight. Hiding in plain sight on a
city street in Atlanta, they walked the perimeter of one of America’s
five biological laboratories where scientists worked on the world’s most
deadly pathogens. They had come to this lab at Georgia State University in 2008 as part of their assignment to quietly case facilities designated as Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) labs, the highest level of biological
containment, required for work with the most dangerous viruses. They
were looking for even the slightest security vulnerability—anything
that might give an edge to terrorists seeking to steal small quantities of
Ebola virus or other lethal disease agents for which there are no treatments, no known cures.

These individuals discovered that in a number of places, the lab
was unprotected by barriers and that outsiders could walk right up to
the building housing these deadly pathogens. Around back, they
watched and took notes as a pedestrian simply strolled into the building through an unguarded loading dock.

On another day, the same people went to San Antonio to check out
another BSL-4 lab, the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical
Research. They discovered that the security camera covered only a
portion of the perimeter, and that the only barrier to vehicles was an
arm gate that would swing across the roadway. The guards assigned to
protect this facility were unarmed. Once again, these individuals
walked the perimeter. This time they spotted a window through which,
standing outside, they could watch the scientists as they worked with
top-security pathogens. Now they knew exactly where the world’s most
deadly pathogens were kept.

This was precisely the lethal trove that al Qaeda’s terrorists had
been seeking for years. But luckily, these operatives on this mission
were not from al Qaeda—they were from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, and

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they visited five of America’s labs that are designated BSL-4. For more
than a decade, U.S. government inspection teams have traveled to
facilities in the former Soviet Union and reported back on the poor
security and lax practices used in storing biological pathogens. Now,
this latest study by GAO has shown that when it comes to materials of
bioterrorism, America’s vulnerability may well begin at home.

The GAO report gave high marks to three of the five facilities
investigated. The investigators measured how the labs fared in 15 security control categories, and these labs met the standards for, respectively, 13, 14, and all 15. Among the 15 security controls were having
armed security guards visible at all public entrances to the lab, full
camera coverage of all exterior entrances, and closed-circuit television
and a command and control center so that any security breach could be
instantly known throughout the facility.

But the two lowest-scoring BSL-4 labs passed in only 3 and 4 of
the 15 categories—a score that is even more troubling because, as
GAO noted, both still met the requirements of the Division of Select
Agents and Toxins of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC).

Despite these shortcomings, the United States is actually at the
forefront of laboratory security in the world today and has by far the
most stringent regulations to restrict access to dangerous pathogens.
Most developing countries, in contrast, have largely ignored the problem of biosecurity because of competing demands for their limited
budgets. Security gaps at laboratories that store and work with dangerous pathogens, both in the United States and around the world, are
worrisome because of continued interest in biological weapons. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell said in a recent
speech, “One of our greatest concerns continues to be that a terrorist
group or some other dangerous group might acquire and employ biological agents...to create casualties greater than September 11.”

Al Qaeda has long sought to obtain biological and chemical
weapons. One of its leading experts in the quest for such weapons was
Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, an Egyptian also known as Abu Khabab
al-Masri. According to media accounts, he was killed in July 2008 by an
airstrike over Pakistan’s northern tribal area.

On July 17, 2008, the Afghanistan National Police arrested Aafia

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Biological and Nuclear Risks

Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman believed to have ties to al Qaeda, who
reportedly had been acting suspiciously outside the governor’s compound in Ghazni province. Educated at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and at Brandeis University, where she earned a Ph.D. in
neuroscience, she had been wanted by the FBI since 2004—the first
woman sought by the law enforcement agency in connection with al
Qaeda. According to media accounts, when arrested she had in her possession a list of New York City landmarks, documents describing how to
produce explosives, and details about chemical, biological, and radiological weapons. She was extradited to New York for trial on charges of
attempted murder and assault of U.S. officers in Afghanistan.

The world is fortunate that al Qaeda to date is not known to have
successfully stolen, bought, or developed agents of bioterror. But scenarios of just how such an incident might occur have been developed
for planning purposes. The Homeland Security Council has created a
chilling scenario of how terrorists could launch an anthrax attack in the
United States—and the horrific chain of events that would follow:

This scenario describes a single aerosol [anthrax] attack in one
city delivered by a truck using a concealed improvised spraying device in a densely populated urban city with a significant
commuter workforce. It does not, however, exclude the possibility of multiple attacks in disparate cities or time-phased
attacks (i.e., “reload”). For federal planning purposes, it will
be assumed that the Universal Adversary (UA) will attack five
separate metropolitan areas in a sequential manner. Three
cities will be attacked initially, followed by two additional
cities 2 weeks later.

It is possible that a Bio-Watch [atmospheric sensor] signal
would be received and processed, but this is not likely to occur
until the day after the release. The first cases of anthrax would
begin to present to Emergency Rooms (ERs) approximately 36
hours post-release, with rapid progression of symptoms and
fatalities in untreated (or inappropriately treated) patients.

The situation in the hospitals will be complicated by the
following facts: The release has occurred at the beginning of
an unusually early influenza season and the prodromal [early]

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symptoms of inhalation anthrax are relatively non-specific.
Physician uncertainty will result in low thresholds for admission and administration of available countermeasures (e.g.,
antibiotics), producing severe strains on commercially available supplies of medications such as ciprofloxacin and doxycycline, and exacerbating the surge capacity problem.

Social order questions will arise. The public will want to
know very quickly if it is safe to remain in the affected city and
surrounding regions. Many persons will flee regardless of the
public health guidance that is provided. Pressure may be
placed directly on pharmacies to dispense medical countermeasures directly, and it will be necessary to provide public
health guidance in more than a dozen languages.

The attack results in 328,848 exposures; 13,208 untreated
fatalities; and 13,342 total casualties. Although property damage will be minimal, city services will be hampered by safety
concerns.

°°°
In September 2001, an American public already reeling from the worst
terrorist attack in U.S. history was stunned by news that envelopes containing anthrax had been delivered via the U.S. mail to targets in the
news media. A week after September 11, letters containing 1–2 grams
of dried anthrax bacterial spores were sent to three major television
broadcast networks, the New York Post, and American Media International (AMI) in Florida, a publisher of supermarket tabloids. On
October 5, the tainted letters claimed their first victim: Robert Stevens,
a photo editor at AMI, died of inhalational anthrax. On October 9, two
more letters bearing the same New Jersey postmark and containing a
more refined preparation of dried anthrax spores were mailed to the
Washington, D.C., offices of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.

During their journey, the anthrax letters passed through automated
mail-sorting machines that forced the microscopic anthrax spores out
through tiny pores in the envelopes, thereby infecting a number of
postal workers. The tainted sorting machines also cross-contaminated
other letters, which were delivered and sickened some of their recipients. By November 2001, 22 people in New York, New Jersey, Con

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necticut, Florida, and the District of Columbia had contracted anthrax,
half of them through the skin (causing cutaneous anthrax) and the other
half through the lungs (causing inhalational anthrax). Five of the 11 victims who contracted inhalational anthrax died.

Former NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, who was one of the targets of the anthrax letters, testified about his experience at the Commission’s public hearing in New York City. About a week after
September 11, 2001, Brokaw said, two of his assistants handled a letter
addressed to him that contained a granular powder. Several days after
coming in contact with the powder, both women developed fever,
malaise, and ugly black skin lesions. Their mysterious illness touched
off several days of confusion and missteps. Three times Brokaw was
told by various health officials, including experts at the U.S. Army’s
biodefense research center at Fort Detrick, in Maryland, that his assistants’ skin lesions had been caused by the bite of a brown recluse spider. Finally, nearly three weeks after the initial exposures, officials
from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
made the correct diagnosis of cutaneous anthrax. Prior to this diagnosis, Brokaw recalled, there was “kind of an unsettled feeling in the
[NBC] building, but we’re confining it because we don’t want to cause
undue panic. You know, we’re operating based on what we’ve been told
by very authoritative sources. Well, when we’re told that it is in fact an
anthrax attack, that [my assistants] have cutaneous anthrax, all hell
broke loose at 30 Rock. There were no [response] systems in place.”

In August 2008, the Department of Justice declared that it had
identified the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks as Bruce E. Ivins,
a government biodefense scientist who had worked for decades at the

U.S. Army’s biodefense research laboratory at Fort Detrick. Ivins had
committed suicide shortly before he was to be indicted for the crime.
The anthrax mailings revealed serious gaps in U.S. preparedness
for bioterrorism that have been only partly addressed over the past
seven years. Since 2001, however, no further bioterrorist attacks have
occurred. What is the risk of another incident? How worried should
the public be? And in the future, how will the bioscience revolution
and the globalization of the biotechnology industry change the nature
of the biological weapons threat?

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What Are Biological Weapons?

Biological weapons are disease-causing microbes (chiefly bacteria and
viruses) and toxins (poisonous substances produced by living creatures) that have been harnessed for the purpose of incapacitating or
killing humans, livestock, or crops. Examples include the bacteria that
cause anthrax and plague, the viruses that cause smallpox and Ebola
hemorrhagic fever, and poisons of natural origin such as ricin and botulinum toxin.

Each of these agents has distinct characteristics that affect its suitability for use as a weapon. These are infectivity (the ability to infect a
human host and cause disease), virulence (the severity of the resulting
illness), transmissibility (the ability of the disease to spread from person to person), and persistence (the duration of a microbe’s survival
after its release into the environment).

The process of turning a natural pathogen into a WMD begins with
acquiring a sample of a disease-causing microbe from a natural source
(such as a person or sick animal) or stealing it from a laboratory or culture collection. But just as a bullet is a harmless lump of lead without a
cartridge and a rifle to deliver it, so most pathogens and toxins are not
effective weapons in their natural state and must be processed
(“weaponized”) and combined with a delivery system to make them
capable of producing large numbers of casualties.

The anthrax bacterium is considered an ideal biological warfare
agent because it is relatively easy to grow, highly lethal when inhaled,
and able to transform itself into a hearty spore that can persist in soil or
contaminate a target area for years. If an individual is treated with
antibiotics shortly after inhaling anthrax spores, the infection can usually be cured. If treatment is delayed, however, the bacterial toxins will
be released, and extraordinary medical intervention is then needed for
the victim to have any chance of survival.

Despite the small quantity of dried anthrax spores used in the
2001 letter attacks—a total of about 15 grams—the ripple effects of the
mailings extended far beyond those sickened or killed. Professor
Leonard Cole of Rutgers University has estimated the total economic
impact of the anthrax letter attacks at more than $6 billion. If only 15
grams of dry anthrax spores delivered by mail could produce such an

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enormous effect, the consequences of a large-scale aerosol release
would be almost unimaginable.

As deadly as anthrax can be, it fortunately is not contagious.
Because persons infected with the disease cannot transmit it to others,
only those who are directly exposed to anthrax spores are at risk. Contagious diseases such as plague or smallpox, in contrast, can be transmitted through person-to-person contact, turning the initial set of
victims into secondary sources of infection.

Many factors would affect the outcome of a biological attack,
including the type and strain of agent; the time of day that it is
released, and the prevailing wind, weather, and atmospheric conditions; and the basic health of the people who are exposed to it. Also
important are the speed and manner in which public health authorities
and medical professionals detect and respond to the resulting outbreak. A prompt response with effective medical countermeasures,
such as antibiotics and vaccination, can potentially blunt the impact of
an attack and thwart the terrorists’ objectives.

The State Threat

During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union
produced and stockpiled biological agents. But in November 1969, the
Nixon administration renounced the U.S. offensive biological weapons
program and then began to destroy its stockpile. This unilateral action
opened the way to the successful negotiation of the 1972 Biological
Weapons Convention (BWC), a multilateral treaty banning the development, production, and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons.

Although the BWC was supposed to end all efforts by states to
develop the capability to employ disease as a weapon, it has unfortunately failed to achieve this goal. Because the materials and equipment
needed to produce biowarfare agents also have legitimate uses in scientific research and commercial industry, it is difficult to verify the BWC
with any degree of confidence. A number of countries have secretly violated the treaty. The most egregious case was that of the Soviet Union,
which created a massive biological weapons development and production complex employing more than 50,000 scientists and technicians.

Today, several important countries—Egypt, Israel, and Syria among
them—remain outside the Biological Weapons Convention. The U.S.

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State Department has also expressed concern that some parties to the
treaty, such as Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, may be pursuing
offensive biological weapons programs in secret.

The Non-State Threat

States do not have a monopoly on biological weapons. In the past, a
number of terrorist organizations and rogue individuals have sought to
acquire and use biological or toxin agents. Such weapons may be
attractive to terrorists because of their potential to inflict mass casualties or to be used covertly. In addition, as the anthrax letter attacks of
autumn 2001 clearly demonstrated, even small-scale attacks of limited
lethality can elicit a disproportionate amount of terror and social disruption.

The 2001 anthrax mailings were not the first incident of bioterrorism in the United States. In 1984, the Rajneeshees, a religious cult in
Oregon, sought to reduce voter turnout and win control of the county
government in an upcoming election by temporarily incapacitating
local residents with a bacterial infection. In a test run of this scheme in
September 1984, cult members contaminated 10 restaurant salad bars
in a town in Oregon with salmonella, a common bacterium that causes
food poisoning. The attack sickened 751 people, some seriously.

A decade later, members of a Japanese doomsday cult called Aum
Shinrikyo released anthrax bacterial spores from the roof of a building
in Tokyo. Fortunately, this attack failed because the cult produced and
dispersed a harmless strain of anthrax that is used as a veterinary vaccine. Had Aum succeeded in acquiring a virulent strain and delivered
it effectively, the casualties could have been in the thousands.

Islamist terrorist groups such as al Qaeda have also sought to
acquire biological weapons in the past. Former CIA Director George
Tenet wrote in his memoir that in 1999, in parallel with planning for
the September 11 terrorist attacks, al Qaeda launched a concerted
effort to develop an anthrax weapon that could inflict mass casualties.
The group hired a Pakistani veterinarian named Rauf Ahmad to set up
a bioweapons laboratory in Afghanistan, but he became disgruntled
with the amount of money he was paid and eventually quit. To continue the anthrax work, al Qaeda then hired a Malaysian terrorist, Yazid
Sufaat, who had studied biology at California State University in Sacramento. But in December 2001, after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan,

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Sufaat fled; he was captured by authorities as he tried to sneak back
into Malaysia.

The cases of the Rajneeshees, Aum Shinrikyo, and al Qaeda underscore not only the dangerous potential of bioterrorism but also the technical difficulties that terrorist groups seeking such weapons are likely to
encounter. Aum’s failure to carry out a mass-casualty attack, despite its
access to scientific expertise and ample financial resources, suggests
that one should not oversimplify or exaggerate the threat of bioterrorism. Developing a biological weapon that can inflict mass casualties is
an intricate undertaking, both technically and operationally complex.

Because of the difficulty of weaponizing and disseminating significant quantities of a biological agent in aerosol form, government officials and outside experts believe that no terrorist group currently has
an operational capability to carry out a mass-casualty attack. But they
could develop that capability quickly. In 2006 congressional testimony,
Charles E. Allen, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the
Department of Homeland Security, noted that the threat of bioterrorism could increase rapidly if a terrorist group were able to recruit technical experts who had experience in a national biological warfare
program, with knowledge comparable to that of the perpetrator of the
2001 anthrax letter attacks. In other words, given the high level of
know-how needed to use disease as a weapon to cause mass casualties,
the United States should be less concerned that terrorists will become
biologists and far more concerned that biologists will become terrorists.

The last point bears repeating. We accept the validity of intelligence estimates about the current rudimentary nature of terrorist
capabilities in the area of biological weapons but caution that the terrorists are trying to upgrade their capabilities and could do so by
recruiting skilled scientists. In this respect the biological threat is
greater than the nuclear; the acquisition of deadly pathogens, and their
weaponization and dissemination in aerosol form, would entail fewer
technical hurdles than the theft or production of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium and its assembly into an improvised nuclear device.

The difficulty of quantifying the bioterrorism threat to the United
States does not make that threat any less real or compelling. It involves
both motivation and capability, and the first ingredient is clearly present. Al Qaeda had an active biological weapons program in the past,
and it is unlikely that the group has lost interest in employing infectious

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disease as a weapon. That roughly a half-dozen countries are suspected
to possess or to be seeking biological weapons also provides ample
grounds for concern.

The Future Threat

In addition to the current threat of bioweapons proliferation and terrorism, a set of over-the-horizon risks is emerging, associated with
recent advances in the life sciences and biotechnology and the worldwide diffusion of these capabilities. Over the past few decades, scientists have gained a deep understanding of the structure of genetic
material (DNA) and its role in directing the operation of living cells.
This knowledge has led to remarkable gains in the treatment of disease
and holds the promise of future medical breakthroughs. The industrial
applications of this knowledge are also breathtaking: it is now possible
to engineer microorganisms to give them new and beneficial characteristics.

Activity has been particularly intense in the area of biotechnology
known as synthetic genomics. Since the early 1980s, scientists have
developed automated machines that can synthesize long strands of
DNA coding for genes and even entire microbial genomes. By piecing
together large fragments of genetic material synthesized in the laboratory, scientists have been able to assemble infectious viruses, including
the polio virus and the formerly extinct 1918 strain of the influenza
virus, which was responsible for the global pandemic that killed
between 20 million and 40 million people.

As DNA synthesis technology continues to advance at a rapid
pace, it will soon become feasible to synthesize nearly any virus whose
DNA sequence has been decoded—such as the smallpox virus, which
was eradicated from nature in 1977—as well as artificial microbes that
do not exist in nature. This growing ability to engineer life at the
molecular level carries with it the risk of facilitating the development
of new and more deadly biological weapons.

The only way to rule out the harmful use of advances in biotechnology would be to stifle their beneficial applications as well—and that
is not a realistic option. Instead, the dual-use dilemma associated with
the revolution in biology must be managed on an ongoing basis. As
long as rapid innovations in biological science and the malevolent
intentions of terrorists and proliferators continue on trajectories that

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are likely to intersect sooner or later, the risk that biological weapons
pose to humanity must not be minimized or ignored.

Nuclear Risks

Pelindaba sprawls across the rolling hills west of Pretoria, a series of low,
flat buildings among clusters of trees far greener than the brownish
grasslands of the region. Its name is familiar to the citizens of South
Africa, though few of them have ever seen it. It is known to be a repository of hundreds of kilograms of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) that are the leftovers of the nuclear weapons program that
produced six bombs before South Africa famously became the world’s
first and only nuclear nation to go the route of complete nuclear disarmament. It is also known as one of South Africa’s most tightly secured
installations, surrounded by 10,000-volt security fences, protected by a
well-armed security force, and monitored by around-the-clock closed-
circuit television cameras.

The attack came without warning, in the early morning hours of
November 8, 2007.

Two armed teams struck the facility. The first consisted of four
men: they burst into the facility’s eastern block and headed for the control room. Later, authorities would say the four had gotten into the
compound by cutting a hole in the high-voltage fence.

Inside the control room was the nuclear installation’s emergency
services operational officer and the control room’s night shift supervisor. As the attackers burst in, the emergency services officer, Anton
Gerber, pushed the control room supervisor under the desk—because
she happened to be his fiancée and, he would later explain, he just
wanted to protect her. The attackers shot him in the chest; the bullet,
which narrowly missed his heart, broke a rib and punctured his lung—
missing his spine by 2 centimeters, a doctor later said. Gerber said that
after being shot, he continued trying to fight off the intruders as they
attacked him with a screwdriver.

Then, as quickly as they had arrived, the intruders left—without
making any effort to steal the nuclear material or sabotage the control
room, the reactors, or anything else. They had grabbed one computer
as they fled but dropped it when Pelindaba’s security forces finally got
to the scene, an estimated 45 minutes after the attackers had entered

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the compound. They got away cleanly. Later that night, a second team
attacked. But guards spotted them early this time and sounded the
alarm, and these attackers also fled.

South African authorities found the whole episode baffling—was
this an inside caper with some sort of personal motive or was it really
about nuclear terrorism? Why was it that the attackers spent 45 minutes inside the compound without being detected by either the high-
tech equipment or the security guards?

International nuclear nonproliferation officials and nongovernmental experts found it frightening—focusing on what might have
been. Could the attackers have stolen enough highly enriched uranium
to fashion a nuclear bomb? Could South Africa’s weapons-grade nuclear
material have wound up in the possession of terrorists?

After reviewing the incident with South African authorities, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) determined that the
HEU was never in any real danger, because the intruders never made
it to the areas where the nuclear material was stored. Still, as Matthew
Bunn, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard University,
stated in his April 2008 testimony to the Senate Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs Committee, “This incident is nevertheless a
potent reminder that inadequately secured nuclear material is a global
problem, not one limited to the former Soviet Union.”

So far as we know, the world has been the beneficiary of both skill
and luck that terrorists have not yet obtained nuclear weapons-grade
material and made it into a bomb. For nuclear thefts have occurred, as
well as some well-known attempts by terrorists to buy bomb-making
material on the black market.

°°°
The world today confronts a growing nuclear risk. Even as some states
seek to acquire nuclear weapons, others are looking to expand their
arsenals. Concern about the spread of nuclear weapons intensifies with
the possibility of a large increase in nuclear power production to meet
growing energy demands—a nuclear renaissance. As additional countries acquire nuclear facilities—particularly if they build uranium
enrichment facilities or reprocessing facilities, ostensibly to provide fuel
for their power plants and reduce the waste associated with the spent
nuclear fuel—the number of states possessing the knowledge and capa

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Biological and Nuclear Risks

bility to “breakout” and produce nuclear weapons will increase significantly. This also increases the risk that such materials could be diverted
to, or stolen by, terrorist groups.

In addition, there is already a surfeit of nuclear material in the
world. More than 40 countries possess nuclear material that could be
used in a nuclear weapon, though at present almost all of it (about 95
percent) is in Russia and the United States. Hence those two countries
have a special role to play in accounting for, securing, and reducing
nuclear materials.

Most black market sources of actual weapons-grade nuclear material that terrorists seek appear to have originated from Russia or other
former Soviet states. Much of it was most likely diverted or stolen by an
individual with access to a facility designed to hold such materials.
There have been multiple seizures by authorities in Russia and elsewhere of kilogram quantities of HEU. Even more disconcerting are
reports that in 1998 the Russian Federal Security Service uncovered a
plot by employees in a nuclear facility to steal 18.5 kilograms of material described only as suitable for the “production of components for
nuclear weapons.” Taken together these attempts represent enough
material to produce at least one nuclear weapon.

More recently, there was a sting operation pulled off by the law
enforcement officials of the Republic of Georgia. In February 2006,
Georgian officials arrested Oleg Khintsagov, a Russian merchant from
the North Ossetia region, on charges that he was trying to sell 100
grams of highly enriched uranium; they also took four Georgians into
custody. After saying little publically about the case for a year, officials
put out the word that the key to the arrest was a Georgian who spoke
Turkish and pretended to be a Muslim from an organization interested
in buying bomb-making fuel. Khintsagov claimed that he got the uranium from a source in the Siberian academic city of Novosibirsk. Russians said that their tests on the sample were inconclusive and expressed
concerns that the arrest was politically motivated; Georgian officials
said that the uranium appeared to be Russian. Khintsagov was sentenced to eight years in jail.

In another case, a small-time nuclear thief from Russia became a
big-time nightmare for officials of the International Atomic Energy
Agency.

Leonid Smirnov was a foreman at the Luch Scientific Production

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Biological and Nuclear Risks

facility in Podolsk, just two hours by train from Moscow. His job was to
weigh and inventory nuclear material, then dispense it to other workers. Because the scales at Luch were not very accurate, all measurements recorded for inventory were assumed to have a 3 percent
margin of error. So, in the first years of the post-Soviet Russia, Smirnov
figured that he would steal just a little bit at a time—always within the
margin of error. And that’s what he did. Night after night, he carried
home a small amount of enriched uranium and put it in a lead-lined
container that he kept on the balcony of his apartment, which overlooked a children’s playground. In four months, he had collected 1,598
grams of 90-percent enriched uranium. Meanwhile, no discrepancies
were visible in the ledgers at Luch.

Not being a practiced thief, Smirnov did not know how to sell it on
the black market. When he sought advice from some friends who were
thieves, they told him they were going to take the train to Moscow to
sell some batteries; he could come along and bring his loot with him.
But as it happened, the Podolsk police had been watching his pals and
they were arrested. In the police station, after his friends were booked
and led away, the police asked what he had in his lead container. Uranium, said Smirnov. The police ran out of the building into the street—
and Smirnov ran after them, politely reassuring his captors and
insisting that they were perfectly safe. He was arrested, and his helpfulness earned him a light sentence.

What led officials at IAEA to call Smirnov a nightmare was that he
could have stolen enough material to make a bomb and sold it to terrorists—with the books at Luch still showing all the uranium
accounted for and without IAEA officials ever having a clue that there
was a problem.

This story underscores how U.S.-Russian cooperation can help
secure so-called loose nukes—and that sometimes even small acts can
lead to major improvements in security. Under the U.S. Cooperative
Threat Reduction Program, also known as the Nunn-Lugar program
(after its two respected congressional sponsors, Senators Sam Nunn
and Richard Lugar), the United States paid for new digital state-ofthe-art scales for the Luch facility. The result: no more rounding off
within margins of error, and thus no more opportunities for small-time
nuclear thieves like Leonid Smirnov to steal a bomb’s worth of uranium, bit by bit.

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