National Security Forum on Biological and Chemical Weapons

Introduction Throughout the cold war the world's national security leadership was preoccupied with the threat of a nuclear holocaust and worked to reduce nuclear danger. At the same time, largely unnoticed, more and more nations were acquiring the ability to produce biological and chemical weapons (BCWs), and many proceeded to do so. Currently about twenty-five nations have a CWs capability, ranging from research and development to deployed weapons. This is three times the number of nuclear-capable nations, which is not surprising since CWs are considerably cheaper and easier to make than nuclear bombs. In addition, BWs are a rapidly growing global danger as a result of recent advances in biotechnology spurred by developments in molecular biology and genetics. Roughly a dozen nations are currently believed to have active programs for producing BWs. BCWs have been used infrequently in military conflicts - most recently during the 1980s in the Iran-Iraq war -- in large measure because they are relatively inappropriate for tactical military situations owing to the unpredictability of their spread in gases and aerosols and their delayed, debilitating effects on humans. In the hands of ruthless dictators or terrorists, however, these weapons have a devastating potential. Moreover, they are proliferating in large and small countries -- including some of the most impoverished, as well as reactionary and unstable regimes - according to the Non-Proliferation Center of the Central Intelligence Agency in its recent reports on BCWs. Terrorist groups have already used CWs against civilians in urban settings. In 1995, a series of incidents across Japan involving unidentified toxic fumes culminated in a sarin gas attack by the cult Aum Shinrikyo in the Tokyo subways, which killed twelve and injured thousands. Only the group's failure to use a purer formula of sarin and an inadequate means of dispersal prevented the casualties from being very much greater. Also in 1995, a former associate of the Aryan Nations, a white supremacist organization, ordered three vials of freeze-dried bubonic plague bacterium by mail order from a firm in Maryland. The federal government was alerted to the danger by the firm when the individual impatiently called to find out why his shipment had not arrived. He was subsequently arrested and convicted of wire fraud for misstating the material's intended use; receiving a six-month suspended sentence, he was apprehended again in 1998 in Nevada under suspicion, which ultimately proved false, of possessing anthrax. BW pathogens are, pound for pound and by lethality per dollar expended, the most potent weapons in existence. Less than a microgram of dried anthrax spores is lethal when inhaled. Furthermore, the imminent threat of BWs can no longer be ignored, for modern biotechnology has increased the accessibility of virulent pathogenic bugs. For instance, how to produce anthrax spores with diameters of a few microns, which can then be disseminated by existing spray mechanisms, is known by advanced students in laboratories around the world. This means that a small group of determined and capable individuals could kill or incapacitate many, many thousands of individuals by releasing such an aerosol over a large urban area to be dispersed by the prevailing winds. It is especially difficult to determine emerging BCWs threats, for the materials used in them are also used in pharmaceuticals and in biological and chemical research. The chemical manufacturing facility in Khartoum, which was targeted in the August 1998 US cruise missile attack, for example, also manufactured conventional pharmaceuticals. It is especially difficult to discover an emerging BWs threat because the production facilities need be no larger than a micro-brewery and need only a small seed stock of a disease-producing pathogen to get started. Also, biotechnology is information-intensive, rather than capital- or facility-intensive, and much of the relevant data are available in the open scientific literature. The above adds up to a troubling and difficult challenge to society. The United States must understand and prepare to respond to the use of BCWs by terrorists. But what measures can and should our society take to protect itself or to prevent the acquisition and use of such weapons? What methods of intrusive intelligence and enhanced vigilance for early detection of threatening activities are likely to be effective, or compatible with our values as a democratic society? What possible unilateral actions are legally defensible and consistent with our foreign policy goals and relations with our allies? What public health and civil defense measures should this threat receive in terms of preparations to respond to a terrorist attack (i.e., vaccines, protective wear, trained response units, etc.)? Who is responsible on the national and local levels? The Hoover Institution at Stanford University has organized this conference to address these important issues. In it we will present and discuss the full range of technical, legal, social, and medical issues to try and develop a better understanding of this growing and serious national security threat. Remarks of Secretary of the Navy Richard J. Danzig TWO INCIDENTS AND THE NEW CONTAINMENT It is customary to begin a talk like this by thanking the organizers of the conference for inviting me. I do not want to do that; in fact, I want to object…. I do thank you, Abe [Abraham D. Sofaer] and Sid [Sidney D. Drell], for organizing this conference. I think you've really done a wonderful thing. However, I am not so sure you have done a good thing to me. You've asked me to speak on a topic where the audience knows vastly more about the subject than I do. Further, you've asked me to give you some new insights or propositions that you have not discovered over this 36-hour period of talking with one another. Finally, being astute about biological and chemical matters, Sid, you first laced the audience with drink and have now left them hungry. I am very acutely aware of the fact that the only thing that stands between you and dinner is me. So, I am going to speak relatively briefly, but I do want to try to give you a somewhat different slant on issues that you all have thought about a fair amount. I'd like to do it by following the Pentagon's time-honored practice of telling stories. You may not think we tell stories that much, but I've seen many Pentagon budgets and so I know a fish[y] story when I see it. The stories could, of course, in Pentagon kinds of terms, be defined as scenarios. I'll tell each fairly briefly and then step back and try to draw for you a handful of observations - five inferences that can be drawn from them. En route, I will comment a little bit about some of the things I had the opportunity to listen to during the course of today's panels. Let me set the first tale at an indefinite time, I will call it the year 18. Assume it occurs in a setting like America experienced at the time of Desert Storm. Assume that in the year 18 we have a country out there, X, that has invaded another country, Y, and we have decided we need to mobilize to deal with it. We have gathered our active duty troops and our reservists at various places in the United States for staging. In one of those places, Ft. Riley, the troops begin to get sick. The sickness presents itself at first as a normal flu-like experience and is, by and large, ignored by troops as they go about their business, because they realize the gravity of their work. By ignoring the illness in its early stages, and emphasizing the higher value that they are pursuing, they became more ill and more prone to infecting other people. Ultimately, we have a serious outbreak at Ft. Riley. The doctors treat the sickness like they treat flu, in ways you all well know: aspirin, bed rest, that kind of thing. This is the prescription we have; it is, the way we treat this illness. Imagine in this circumstance that people get more sick and then some significant number of them die. Examination reveals that their lungs have filled with a transuded fluid - that is to say, for us non-medical types, a fluid that does not suggest the presence of bacteria but is indicative of a viral infection. Then abruptly, the illness goes away and we continue with our mobilization and we send troops abroad. But a few weeks later, just as suddenly, it breaks out again, and more people die. It infects our troops abroad, our allies and, indeed to some degree, it even infects some of the troops of country X. It then appears again in the United States, and a very substantial number of our troops mobilizing at home become more ill. For example, in Ft. Drum, New York, we find that well over 10 percent of the soldiers on duty are incapable of functioning because of the illness. As the illness spreads to the civilian population, Americans begin dying by the tens of thousands. Within a couple of months, deaths in the United States exceed one million. Now, let's think about the impact of that on decision-makers in the world that we have just seen. Obviously, we'll think about biological weaponry, and we'll think about retaliation. As the illness spreads and deaths mount, the pressure for nuclear retaliation will rise in ways that the panelists this afternoon hinted at. The arguments for using nuclear weapons in that circumstance will be very extreme and strong. They will be intensified by the observation that X, in this case, has experimented with biological weapons and has developed a variety of techniques, although not exhibiting capabilities directly related to this particular illness. The desire for retaliation will be intensified further when the FBI arrests two people who clearly are agents of country X, attempting to introduce a different biological agent into the United States. Now, I'd like to step back from that scenario which should be chilling for all of us and may have led some of you to the brink of nuclear warfare. I'll note for you that the year 18, which I picked to begin with, was really an actual year, and the year was 1918. I just described for you the "Spanish Flu" epidemic in the United States as it was experienced, with an initial outbreak at Ft. Riley, illness in the manner that I've described, disease spreading abroad to our troops overseas, then to the allies, and back home. Biological attack was not merely a remote suspicion in 1918 - there is evidence that during World War I, German agents inoculated horses with glanders disease, at the Ports of New York and Baltimore, before they were shipped to France. It's uncertain what effect the glanders disease attack had on the Allies' logistical efforts, but the human cost of the naturally occurring influenza virus was devastating. Ultimately deaths in the United States reached 600,000 in 1918, which equate to about 1.4 million in today's population. Now you may think that's a very dated and unfair observation. After all, I've just written an op-ed piece about the NEW (non-explosive warfare) weapons, and here I am talking about an old event. But it is a very realistic example - flu, influenza of this kind - we all know it could happen again. Scientists who have thought about this - I think particularly of Josh Lederberg who's beaten this drum for a long time - have emphasized the importance of preparing against these kinds of contingencies and they've pointed out that we are in fact not dramatically better prepared scientifically in this regard than we were in 1918. We know about viruses now; we didn't know about viruses then. We have antibiotics now, but antibiotics deal with second-order effects of viral infections, that is, opportunistic bacterial infection. These drugs don't meet our needs - we need powerful means of dealing with influenza other than bed rest and so forth. Yes, we could send this sample of the virus down to the CDC and have it carefully assessed. When we got done with that assessment, we would note that we were dealing with a new and more virulent form of virus…. But however we assess the change in its sequencing and its degree of mutation, we are as likely still to find that we are unable to assess whether it was a man-made change in sequencing or was in fact a natural occurrence. Think, for example, about the difficulties that arose in Hong Kong when we had a new variant of influenza and dealt with H5N1 changes, as they came to be known. The epidemiological result ultimately determined it to be derived from an avian, or bird-based, flu transiting to become a human-based flu in a way that was previously unprecedented. Think also about the fact that in our own experience we know that when troops mass, they are peculiarly subject to disease. The natural occurrences of biological incidents arose particularly in places like Ft. Riley and its equivalent in New England when the influenza epidemic returned. Hantaviruses are known to us because of our experiences in the Korean War. In the 1950s it was our troops that went into the Han Valley and came down with this illness we very little understood. In another context, we know that natural occurrences can be thought of by people as biological attacks. 1977 - Rift Valley Fever in Egypt. The reactions of the Egyptians and their newspapers was that the outbreak of this disease was the result of an Israeli plot. I'm sure Ariel [Levite, Israeli Ministry of Defense] can comment on this afterwards. But in fact, there was strong reason to believe that this was not a natural occurrence. Rift Valley Fever is called this because it occurs in the Rift Valley…. It's a great advantage to get away from Latin names for these illnesses, because I never know what they mean…. The experiences of Rift Valley fever outside the Rift Valley had been confined to one relatively isolated incident in Sudan. When people began to investigate why this outbreak occurred, the answer turned out to be that a phenomenon previously unfamiliar had caused it… and that was the building of the Aswan Dam and the change it brought to the migration route of the animal population that carries this illness … and so a natural occurrence can readily be confused with a man-made occurrence. I want to come back to that in a moment, but I ask you to think about it while I tell you my second story. X has invaded Y, same two countries, same situation, Desert Storm-like scenario. We mobilize and begin our bombing campaign to try in a variety of ways, as we did in Desert Storm, to soften up the opposition. The White House receives written notification from a terrorist group in the United States, along with a vial of anthrax. The notification says that they regard the bombing of country X as an immoral act - not because it is an act of warfare, but because it kills civilians. Because our bombing campaign is killing civilians every day, they intend to retaliate by killing civilians in the United States until we stop our bombing campaign. They will do it by biological attacks on four U.S. cities, names unspecified, agent unspecified, but they are enclosing anthrax to show their seriousness and credibility. They also provide a code to authenticate future communications. Shortly after that, we receive from country X information that they have learned about a terrorist group which is preparing to wage biological attacks on U.S. cities. They regard this as anathema, entirely hostile and inappropriate, and against all legitimate rules of warfare, however inappropriate our bombing campaign is in their view. Since they regard this terrorist threat as immoral, they are giving us all their information about this group, which unfortunately is extremely limited and gives us very little help. Now, the President of the United States is summoning various people to help, some of whom are undoubtedly in this room, and they are confronted with some serious difficulties. One difficulty relates to what kinds of preparations we have available to counter this threat, and if we do have viable preparations, how do we employ them? Our difficulty becomes accentuated when we receive a second message shortly thereafter from the terrorist group - validated by its code - indicating that they have selected one city amongst the four and want to make it known to decision-makers. To spice up your dinner, that city is San Jose. Frances [Winslow, San Jose Office of Emergency Services], I apologize for this wherever you are. Does the President do anything with respect to the citizens of San Jose at that point? To what degree do we take preparatory action and what does it consist of? When we make an assessment that, amongst other things, states the risks here may be real, the President asks: "Should I be stockpiling antibiotics?" He is told that the population of San Jose is 900,000, with 1.8 million in the county, and his antibiotic supply - our antibiotic supply for the nation as a whole - would last approximately three weeks if given exclusively to the citizens of San Jose. He'll have to decide whether he wants to do this or to take partial moves that might provide partial help to more people. If he does treat San Jose, what about those other three cities? If he provides some announcement, what is the effect on San Jose, and for that matter, on our bombing campaign? Further, if this is introduced as an effort with regard to San Jose, what happens to the effects in terms of all those other undefined cities? What does our psychological and public relations look like? What does it mean if we move our resources here in terms of the preparations there? Serious - obviously serious difficulties. These are no more purely hypothetical in some respects than what I offer about 1918 recreating itself. I took some of this case from what I learned from interviewing, amongst others, Scooter Libby who is here and who thought about these kinds of issues in a somewhat different form, when we did in fact fight Desert Storm. And they are the kinds of issues we need to think about. So what are the implications of my two tales? I promised you five, I'll give them to you in just that way, recognizing that I am being a little simplistic but also that you are all hungry for dinner. First proposition: Biological warfare, it seems to me, is suffuse with ambiguity. It blurs distinctions, and a number of us have commented - you've seen it in my New York Times op-ed piece, and a number of you have been saying it separately for a fair while… that distinctions between home and abroad are raised. Distinctions between crime and warfare are very much diminished. In my examples, distinctions between natural occurrences and acts of war are raised. Look at what happened here. I have described to you two biological incidents in the United States, but in neither incident was there an attack. I have described to you potential tumult and chaos of a sort you might envision arising when San Jose learns about this. This will be enormous … but there was no attack. If the President decided not to tell San Jose about this, think what happens when the government of X and the terrorist group tell San Jose that the President didn't tell them about this but knew about it a week ago. The difficulties of these circumstances, of the ambiguities here - about what is happening and whether you are being attacked, whether it is natural or man-made - give rise to wholly different consequences than in many other forms of warfare, and we need to come to grips with that. A second point here relates to discussions, like the ones you heard today, about nuclear deterrence. In my view, such discussions that assume biological attack occurs in some binary manner, where we know it happened or didn't, occur too often. And it seems to me, making a credible nuclear deterrent is vastly more difficult in circumstances where that first factor of ambiguity comes into play. I think, of course, that deterrence may have some significant role to play, as the threat of a nuclear response to a biological attack. You can subdue the inclinations of states to use terrorist groups as cat's paws, but we would be very foolish to rely on it to any significant extent. It would not help us terribly much in the stories that I have just told. Third, note about these stories something that is different from most kinds of warfare, and that is their duration. This is not an incident; these are extended series of events, even in their single attack circumstance. Pathogens, in the natural occurrence, typically spread over a period of many months. In the example I have just given you, the consequences of an attack that never came occurred over a period of many weeks, when we were dealing with the terrorist group. They will be played out, not as a single incident in time, but as a series of events. The consequences are extremely complex as a result. This leads me to my fourth point, which is that the crucial arena of activity is consequence management. It is not an area of warfare that in my view is very subject to the single silver bullet of the multivalent vaccine, the ability to find an effective nuclear deterrence, some prevention device, or detector. It is in a very substantive measure an issue associated with panic, with mass psychology, with public health - the kinds of skills associated with figuring out what's going on. During the Sarin attack in Tokyo, medical facilities experienced an influx of "worried well" (or hypochondriacs) versus genuinely sick patients at a ratio of 10 to 1 - rapidly overwhelming their medical infrastructure and personnel. The skills required to deal with such a situation are different and demanding, and they are not common to the military psychology or to our existing bureaucracy. This brings me to a fifth and final point, which also causes me to underscore in my view the value of this conference and our gratitude to Sid and Abe. The kinds of issues raised here cross boundaries. They cross every kind of boundary, and the hardest problems for us are the ones of attempting to determine how to work across boundaries. The boundaries are in some respects bureaucratic. My story too is about how we would respond with our intelligence apparatus, our military apparatus, FEMA, the Public Health Service, our Reserves, or our local policing authorities. The complexities of doing that are enormous. They are multidisciplinary kinds of complexities. That influenza DNA is going to be analyzed at CDC; it's going to be brought forward and need to be understood by press people. We're going to have the same kind of cross discussion that you have seen in this conference over these days among people who don't normally talk to one another and have difficulty understanding one another and sometimes difficulty being comfortable with one another. In the end, the challenges of biological warfare are in substantial measure conceptual. They are challenges to us all in understanding this problem and putting the pieces together, and each contributing our small piece with respect to it. Ultimately then, in my view, dealing with it in ways that give us a larger measure of protection than we enjoy now. If these events occurred today, as well they could, we would have a world in which we would have benefited enormously from the progress that has been made over the last several years, progress that I for one greatly value. We would have first responders trained in some significant measure in San Jose. We would have the beginnings of some kinds of antibiotic stockpiles. We would have units in-place like the CBIRF (Chemical- Biological Incident Response Force) that you heard a little bit from today. We would have a higher degree of attention at USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease) and places like that to the biological part of the problem. We have come a fair way in beginning to understand the relationships we need between the different U.S. domestic agencies… the civilian side and the Department of Defense. We have a coordinator in the White House and serious Presidential interest. We have even reached the point where we have a conference at Stanford. But the fact is, we would all be very subject to severe injury today, because we are that far away still from where we need to be. I don't need to preach the gospel to a group as well-informed and as committed as this one. But I hope that in my two scenarios I've given you some sense of context. The problem for each of us is putting together in the larger context the smaller individual insights that we bring and recognizing that the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts, both in the challenges that we'll confront and in what we need to do to produce solutions. So, I truly thank you Abe and Sid for this opportunity to speak to this group. And I wish you all not only a wonderful dinner, but good years ahead as we work harder and hopefully better on this problem. Thank you very much. Remarks of Secretary of the Navy Richard J. Danzig QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION November 17, 1998 Q: …[Garbled] said at one time that the barbarians would always defeat the civilized because the barbarians could make decisions, and the civilized could not. And you have outlined some scenarios where the decision-making process appears to be extremely convoluted, and I am just wondering if in one of those circumstances we're going to lose our decision-making capability and therefore lose the war before we get started. Secretary Danzig: Yes, it's a very nicely put question and I am looking forward to your answer… I think this is the core of what a number of us have described as asymmetric warfare. You don't need to be a major industrial state to do this. You can do it in a small group. I sometimes think as some of you probably have, what if the Unabomber had been a biologist and not a mathematician? In a variety of ways our sophisticated machinery is much more cumbersome and that also gives the advantages to the attacker in this circumstance of asymmetry. Having said that, obviously we need to play the hand we're dealt, and I've got to believe that a nation which has done such a good job of overcoming so many other complexities or challenges can address this one in a satisfactory way. I personally do not believe we will overcome this challenge. I believe that what we will do is to manage its consequences and limit it. And by doing that, if we do that reasonably well, I believe we'll reduce the propensity of others to use it. So, my biggest concern is to keep to a minimum the inclination to copycat in this arena and recognize that the real test of our skills is going to come when we have an incident big enough and real enough to attract attention and we deal with that… hopefully in ways that make it reasonably confined. That's why I call this talk "Two Incidents and the New Containment." In the end, what we are trying to do is not so much to contain in the historical sense of preventing an opponent from getting at us, as trying to contain the effects if they do get at us. But it's tough, and your question is well put. Q: I guess what I'm saying is we knew more about the ability of scientists today to get at the issue of the origin of an epidemic. We're thinking - most of us now are thinking in molecular terms - when we investigate outbreaks whole two blocks [sic] available strains that have already been sequenced and can be compared with the new agent that is responsible for an outbreak, and it is rare in my personal experiences for the issue of, where did this come from, what's the source, what's the origin, how can we use a body of information about the strains of the same agent to get at that quest? It's rare for that not to happen as part of the initial investigation, so I am not sure. I guess I am an optimist that the issue of the source and the differentiation of the attack vs. the natural event is going to be the very first question that is going to be addressed. And I think it is going to be answered very quickly. Secretary Danzig: It's an important question and well worth a longer discussion than what we're going to have now. I can only tell you that I talked to a number of people in and around this question - scientists and so on - just before coming in here this minute, I was talking with Steve Block. I think we can tell in these circumstances whether we are dealing with a new form of the genome, a new sequence or mutation. I think that in many mainstream cases we will have extremely great difficulty determining whether it is man-made or natural. When we make those determinations, bear in mind if we are going to talk about things like nuclear retaliation, we demand a very high degree of certainty. Think what happened when we have an airplane event like Lockerbie, and how long it took before we retaliated against Libya. Where we were putting together an explosive pattern, the degree of proof we required there. And think now about biological incidents and how often confused we've been historically in some of the examples I have described. All I can tell you is you're better positioned than I am to comment on the degree to which this scientifically can be determined. But I've put this question to a fair number of scientists and they don't share your optimism. Abraham D. Sofaer: What you are saying, as I understand it - is that it really doesn't matter that much whether it was something that nature did to us or an enemy did to us. Secretary Danzig: Thank you, that's a very helpful point. I promised Dr. Margaret ["Peggy"] Hamburg I would recite public health as the mantra of this evening, so you're reminding me of my obligation here. One of the great things in this arena, and I tried to point out in my op-ed piece, is that investments in civil defense are not sterile investments in 1950's bomb shelters. They are investments in public health. And they're wonderfully good investments. What we need to do to protect ourselves in these circumstances is to make investments in our public health system in a variety of ways, and that is one sense in which it does not matter. I'd point out a second sense and this may have been in your mind as well. Remember, I gave you two incidents that were enormously disruptive, and they did not involve biological attacks. I can disrupt life in San Jose and mobilization in general to an extraordinary degree, without doing a thing, as long as I make a credible threat. Think what happens in these circumstances. Public officials get there and start to talk about what they think ought to be done. We know this in every disaster that occurs. Some of them will say, stay at home. There's going to be a lot of confusion; a lot of people are going to leave. We heard discussions earlier today about putting daughters on airplanes. We're realistically going to create a fair amount of turbulence. Some of those first-responders we trained are going to leave. We're going to find that our abilities to hold mass public gatherings are going to be reduced. People are going to raise issues about what it means to go into military training, and military bases in those circumstances. People are going to ask the President, what kind of protection is available, and the answers are going to be unnerving. So, there are a lot of investments that I think we want to make even before we get to the issue of whether somebody is attacking with some man-made weapon. Q: Mr. Secretary, I'm Joe MacNamara, research fellow at Hoover. But before coming here I was a police chief of San Jose for 15 years, and I must say none of these attacks occurred during my administration…. I think your comments about intelligence and panic are very important. And yet it raises the question that we've all pondered in terms of the bombing of Iraq [sic] and the intelligence now being questioned… was this really necessary - perhaps you can't comment, but if you could I think we'd all appreciate it. Secretary Danzig: Well, I can't really comment on that, and the reason I'd like to say is because it's all extraordinarily classified and so forth. But the truth is, I just don't know…. Maybe it's because I just got sworn in on Monday and nobody has told me all these things yet…. If they tell me, I'll find out how much your classification rating entitles you to. But on the general point about intelligence, look at the role of intelligence on the two scenarios I described. It's vital! But it is vital in a different way than preempting attacks, even though that is one very valuable thing that intelligence does. If you are the President and you want to determine whether you're dealing with a man-made weaponized virus or natural one, one of the things you want to know is - whether X - what kinds of capability it's got, how much it matches up there. Intelligence may earn its weight in gold many times over by persuading us that we're not dealing with a foreign enemy. In the second scenario, intelligence helps us enormously in trying to figure out what kinds of prophylactic steps to take, where to situate our efforts, what degree of relationship there is between state X and the terrorist group. I left that very ambiguous; it was part of the ambiguity. But maybe if in fact we can point very clearly to the link between state X and the terrorists, we can get state X to control the terrorist group a lot better than we can, if they can claim dissociation with considerable impunity. So, intelligence has functions in consequence management that I value very greatly and I keep coming back to the consequence management theme - it's the thing that is being most neglected because it's messy, it's multidisciplinary and it is not usually what we do - but it's what we need in this circumstance. Q: You have just taken over as Secretary of the Navy, and I find your discussion this evening very thought-provoking and thoughtful. Secretary Danzig: You don't need to ask a question now? That would be great. Thanks…. Q: I now work for you, so, I'm curious as to where this leads you in terms of your new position as Secretary of the Navy, other than you're a member of the leadership of the Defense Department. What does it mean to the Navy? Secretary Danzig: Well, I'll answer that in two ways. One, I think it can mean a fair amount. There are lot of very particular decisions that the Navy and the Marine Corps, which for those of you who are not cognizant in this obscure point, the Marine Corps is a part of the Department of the Navy, make in this area. These two services do an awful lot that's important in this regard. The Marine Corps, for example, established while I was Undersecretary of the Navy the Chemical-Biological Incident Response Force. The Navy has been a leader for a substantial period of time in the development of tests that detect the presence or absence of biological agents. There is substantial scope for research and development kinds of activities in the Navy in the biological arena, and we also have to make a whole lot of practical decisions about the degree to which we invest in biological protection ourselves, for our ships, for our Sailors, etc. So, there's all of that in one arena. And the second side, where, as you say, I am part of a larger leadership group, I always felt that if you are a senior leader in DOD, you have a responsibility to think about issues that matter, without necessarily fitting within some neat bureaucratic framework or boundary. And I began raising this issue in the 1993-94 timeframe, as many of you know because you have been colleagues-in-arms with me. The biblical injunction is right when it says that the truth shall set you free. In the end, if you can get people to think seriously about these issues and they think clearly and they think right, then things will change and you'll make headway. And it doesn't really matter who you are or where you sit within the organization if what you're preaching has some meaningful content to it. So, I began preaching that we ought to be attending to this. Some of the points that we've been discussing over these days are points that I helped to develop. And over time, what we found was people began to pay attention. Very few people stopped to ask, "Hey, you're the Under Secretary of the Navy, why are you involved in this?" I like very much the time when the Secretary responsible for health affairs in the Pentagon said, "Richard is just an historical accident." But it's correct that in the end you can develop these ideas through better understanding, and I believe in a variety of ways that this conference will do that. So, I thank you very much for your being here. Good night…. Remarks of National Intelligence Council Chairman John C. Gannon Thank you, Mr. Secretary [Shultz], for the warm introduction. I am honored to be among such distinguished participants in this important conference on biological and chemical weapons (BCW). Sidney Drell and Abraham Sofaer have done a remarkable job in organizing this rich, two-and-a-half day agenda. Congratulations, Sid and Abe. Let me begin by proving a negative: I am not George Tenet, whom you invited and, I know, devoutly hoped would be here. Being the eleventh-hour substitute for such a dynamic boss is a high-risk business. On the plane last night, I was haunted by the recollection of a sixteenth-century Ottoman emissary to a Balkan state who dutifully stood in for his master, terrified and helpless as his unruly audience turned ugly, and was sent home unceremoniously - after impaling. I thank God that we live in a more forgiving culture . . . I hope! Director Tenet wanted to be here because he believes, with Abe and Sid and many of you, that the United States faces a disturbing and growing challenge from BCW. The fact that George could not be here, thanks to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, only strengthens the argument about the seriousness of the BCW threat. The DCI applauds the work of this conference and regrets that he cannot be here to tell you this in person. The Intelligence Community is working hard against the BCW target. I have seen this first hand as John Deutch's Deputy Directory of Intelligence, which office has administrative responsibility for the DCI's Non-Proliferation Center (NPC), and now as George Tenet's Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which has senior experts helping to guide Community intelligence production on proliferation. This is, and must be, a collaborative effort drawing together knowledge and expertise from inside and outside the US Government. I want to recognize three individuals among us tonight who have played critical roles in building the Intelligence Community's BCW program. First, John Lauder, a valued colleague and friend of mine for many years, is the current chief of NPC. John, who took part in a panel this afternoon, is an extraordinarily able, agile, and unflappable leader - a sort of one-man confidence-building measure - and is making a big, positive difference today. John, please stand and be recognized. Next, Gordon Oehler, John's predecessor as NPC chief, broke paths on proliferation at CIA and in the larger Community for a generation, as a top-notch analyst admired for the rigor of his work, as an accomplished National Intelligence Officer, as the Director of CIA's Office of Scientific and Weapons Research, and as the widely respected head of NPC. Gordon, history will note, developed NPC's strategic plan, which showed a far-flung Intelligence Community how to conceptualize the complex proliferation problem and how, in a practical way, to mobilize against it. I was blessed to work with Gordon when I was Deputy Director of Intelligence. No finer mind or better man has come CIA's way. And, third, is Sid Drell. You are all familiar with Sid as a brilliant theoretical physicist whose impressive academic career parallels a nearly forty-year run as a much respected technical adviser to the US Government on national security and defense issues. I also know Sid as a particularly productive member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) and the Non-Proliferation Panel. In these capacities, Sid has been more of a determined coach than a professor, prodding us relentlessly to improve our performance on proliferation. Thanks, Sid. We owe you. The organizers of this conference rightly point out that throughout the Cold War, while world leaders were preoccupied with the threat of a nuclear holocaust, more and more nations -- largely unnoticed-- were acquiring the ability to produce chemical and biological weapons. George Shultz was among the few statesmen who recognized the threat. No one argued more tenaciously and eloquently than he did for the adoption of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Indeed, one of his final acts as Secretary of State was to address the Chemical Weapons Conference in Paris in January, 1989, where he challenged the international community to adopt the CW Convention. The Secretary asked: "Must it take a fresh shock of human tragedy - must more places like Flanders Fields find their place in the history books through the particular ghastliness of their destruction before governments work together to restore respect for the international norms against chemical weapons use?" Today we recognize that BCW are not just a wartime concern, but a clear and present danger for us at home and abroad. America's prestige and high profile as a global power make us the world's biggest and most dispersed target. Think about it: our deployed military, our embassies abroad, our international commercial interests, and, yes, even our home towns. THE THREAT AS WE SEE IT There are four key points, and one corollary, in all that I will say here tonight. First: the BCW threat is real and growing. Second: the number of potential perpetrators is increasing, particularly non-state actors. Third: agents of increasing lethality are being developed that have the potential to cause massive casualties. And, Fourth: the Intelligence Community alone cannot eliminate this threat, nor can any other single institution or sector. Defeating the BCW threat will take a concerted, collaborative, and integrated approach across national and regional governments, law enforcement, the military, the private sector, the world of medicine, the academic and scientific communities, and the media. And the corollary: this conference, I believe, takes us in the right direction by educating us all to the grave BCW challenges we face and to the need to combine resources to deal with it effectively. The development, possession and use of these abhorrent weapons are banned by domestic law and international treaty. The United States and other concerned governments are working hard to slow proliferation. Nonetheless, the number of players possessing or acquiring BCWclandestinely is substantial and mounting. More than a dozen states, including several that are hostile to Western democracies - Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria - now either possess or are actively pursuing offensive CW and/or BW capabilities for use against their perceived enemies, whether internal or external. Many of these countries are pursuing an asymmetric warfare capability and see BCW as the best means to counter overwhelming US conventional military superiority. Several states are also pursuing BCW programs for counterinsurgency use and tactical applications in regional conflicts, increasing the probability that such conflicts will be deadly and destabilizing. In the 1980s, Iraq used CW against its own Kurdish population and against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. The BW program that Iraq initiated in 1985 rapidly escalated to production and weaponization, constituting a potential threat to allied forces during the Gulf War. As the Iraq case so dramatically demonstrates, even a residual state BCW capability can be highly dangerous. After four-and-one-half years of claiming that it had conducted only "defensive research" on BW, Iraq finally admitted in 1995 that it had produced a half million liters of refined and unrefined biological agents such as anthrax. But, of course, the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) believes that Iraq produced substantially greater amounts - three to four times greater. On the CW side, UNSCOM's recent discovery of VX in Iraqi warheads shows that for seven years the Iraqis have been lying to the international community when they repeatedly said they had never weaponized VX. Beyond state actors, the number of terrorist groups seeking to develop or acquire BCW capabilities is proliferating. And many such groups, like Usama bin Ladin's, have international networks. That adds to uncertainty and to the danger of a surprise attack. The constraints on non-state actors, of course, are much less than on state-sponsored programs. The casualty figures of the Aum Shinrikyo attack in Tokyo three and a half years ago could have been much higher if the group had not used a combination of impure sarin agent and inefficient delivery systems. As it was, 12 people were killed and more than 5,000 needed medical treatment. Usama bin Ladin and his network also have shown a strong interest in chemical weapons. We know that bin Ladin's organization has attempted to develop poisonous gases that could be fired at US troops in the Gulf states. The discovery of the VX precursor EMPTA at a factory in Sudan that had known ties to bin Ladin indicates how close he may have been to achieving his goal. Adding more unpredictability are the "lone militants," or the ad hoc groups here at home and abroad, (and there are plenty of them) who may try to conduct a BCW attack. Take the Ramzi Yousef case. There are indications that Yousef was planning to use cyanide in the World Trade Center bombing and that he had planned to use chemical agents on other occasions. And with "how to" guides like the "Anarchist's Cookbook" available commercially/on the Internet, loners can easily design and build their own weapons. To add to the threat, a growing number of bad actors can choose from a widening array of new agents and new delivery systems. BCW agents, as many of you know, are becoming more sophisticated and more effective. Rapid advances in biotechnology will yield new toxins or live agents, such as exotic animal viruses, that will require new detection methods and vaccines as well as other preventative measures. We are also concerned that some states might acquire more advanced and effective chemical agents, such as Russia's fourth-generation "Novichok" agents, which are more deadly and more persistent. Gains in genetic engineering and "designer drug"-type chemical agents are making it increasingly difficult for us to recognize all the agents threatening us. Meanwhile, advances are occurring in dissemination techniques, delivery options and strategies for use. We are worried that several countries of concern will weaponize BCW warheads for ballistic missiles. We see other qualitative changes that present growing challenges to our detection and deterrence efforts. Some countries are developing indigenous programs. That limits our interdiction opportunities. Iran is a case-in-point. Tehran - driven, in part, by stringent international export controls - has set about acquiring the capability to produce domestically the raw materials and equipment needed to support BCW agent production. Denial and deception techniques, meanwhile, are becoming more effective in concealing and protecting BCW programs. Concealment is simpler with BW than with CW because there is more overlap between legitimate research and commercial biotechnology. That said, in both cases supposedly "legitimate" facilities can readily conduct clandestine BCW research and can convert rapidly to BCW production. Two other phenomena complicate the problems. First, scientists with transferable know-how continue to leave the former Soviet Union, some with undesirable destinations. And, secondly, the struggle to control dual-use technologies only gets harder, with smaller forces ready to transform opportunities for human betterment into threats of human destruction. Russia's current economic woes, of course, could exacerbate the "brain drain" problem. By importing talent and buying technology, state and non-state actors can make dramatic leaps forward in all the areas I just mentioned - the development of new agents and delivery systems, a much earlier achievement of indigenous capabilities, and more sophisticated denial and deception techniques. In short, bad actors can purchase the invaluable advantage of "technological surprise." Regarding the dual-use problem: the same technology that is used for good today, can, if it falls into the wrong hands, be used for evil tomorrow. The overlap between biological agents and vaccines and between chemical agents and pesticides is, as you know, considerable. The technologies used to prolong our lives and improve our standard of living can quite easily be used to cause mass casualties. In the biological field especially, the security community and the public probably do not fully appreciate how widely available BW technology is - in part, because all societies have a legitimate need and use for it. Intelligence is all about ascertaining the capabilities - and even more important - the intentions of one's adversaries. But getting at "intent" is the hardest thing to do - getting inside Kim Jung Il's or Saddam's or bin Ladin's head, if you will. What a chilling thought! Dual-use goes to the very crux of the "intent" challenge. WHAT U.S. INTELLIGENCE DOES TO COUNTER THE BCW THREAT Le me now describe some of what US Intelligence is doing to counter the BCW threat, in addition to seeking closer collaboration with many of you. The US Intelligence Community's efforts to counter the BCW threat are, speaking broadly, comprised of three interrelated elements - One: Assessment and Warning. Two: Deterrence, Disruption and Protection. Three: Monitoring Arms Control Regimes. First, the ultimate objective of our Intelligence Mission is to save American lives and protect America's vital interests. The Intelligence Community's greatest responsibility is to warn the President and other decision-makers and our war-fighters, so that they can make timely and effective decisions. For example, the National Intelligence Council, which I am privileged to lead, recently published a National Intelligence Estimate on World-Wide CW Programs and is currently working on an assessment of Global BW Programs. Second, we intensively focus our intelligence assets - both human and technical - on deterring and disrupting the activities of actors who possess, or seek to develop or acquire key components needed for CW and BW. Our efforts set back Libya's CW program about ten years by focussing international attention on the Rabta and Tarhunah facilities and by preventing Libya from obtaining needed chemicals, equipment and experts. Now, 13 years later, Libya, after spending a great deal of money, has only a small amount of agent and two facilities it dares not use for their intended purpose. If Qaddafi had been left undisturbed, he could by now have had thousands of tons of a variety of chemical agents and the ability to produce much more at will. We are justifiably proud of this achievement, but we recognize all too well that a tactical success does not lessen the strategic BCW threat we face. The Intelligence Community also provides the information required for Department of Defense and the military to protect our forces from the effects of enemy use of CBW agents. We provided intelligence on evolving chemical and biological agents, their means of delivery and expected effects. Third, we have provided policymakers with evidence that parties might be engaged in prohibited activities under various international control regimes, including the Australia Group export control regime, and the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions. Moreover, our intelligence input has helped negotiators draft tighter and more verifiable agreements. WHAT ABOUT TOMORROW Consider our warning challenge. America is no longer an insular nation protected by two large oceans. The battlefield of the future could be Main Street, USA. Our enemies - be they states launching BCW-tipped missiles or terrorists concealing small vials of virus - can bring the BCW threat to our own shores and heartland. Warning time may be all but eliminated. Another big question we must revisit is: whom now do we warn? If we have evidence of an imminent domestic attack, we need to warn not just the President and senior policymakers, we need to get the information - and get it fast - to police and fire chiefs, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies that would produce vaccines. In fact, if time were of the essence, one could argue that first-responders, i.e., the local authorities, should be alerted at the same time we warn the President. We must pursue and develop stronger and tighter links with first-responders, the public health community, law enforcement and private industry. We've already taken some important steps in this direction. For the first time, the DCI's Counterterrorist Center, in concert with the FBI, is providing terrorism threat-related products to state and local officials. John Lauder, the NPC Chief I lionized a short while ago, recently attended a meeting at the FBI in which first-responders from all over the Washington metropolitan area gathered to discuss BCW incident response. It was the first time a senior nonproliferation official sat side-by-side and exchanged ideas with police and fire chiefs. We need to work more with federal and local authorities to put some mechanism - some pipeline - in place that has enough bandwidth to get the right information quickly to the right people at all levels in time to avert the worst. As a country, we have only started to develop strategies for limiting the damage and managing the consequences should a BCW attack occur. It is good that we have begun. We are light years ahead of other countries on this. But our nation is far from prepared. With regard to the Intelligence Community's deterrence and disruption function, let me tell you: the current expectation that US intelligence will be able to thwart future BCW attacks is exceedingly high. Our fear is not that someday, somewhere, an attack will succeed and the Intelligence Community will be accused of failure. Our fear is that people will die - a lot of people. The ominous trends I described earlier - the growing number of actors wishing us harm, and their growing ability to cloak their BCW capabilities and intentions - means that the odds of a successful attack are increasing despite our vigilance. The nonproliferation effort in our Intelligence Community does not constitute a Manhattan Project operation. By that, I mean an operation in which leading experts from all over the country have been pulled in and assembled in one place to work on a single, definable product like building the atomic bomb. Our goal is different - effectively countering an array of constantly evolving targets. At CIA we have indeed gathered some dedicated in-house talent. Much talent also resides elsewhere in the US Government and beyond, and we are working the BCW issue cross-Community and with the Department of Defense and other government agencies as never before. But the talent we have is not sufficient, and additional resources alone will not solve the problem. In peacetime, it's not realistic to expect we can pull into government America's leading engineers and scientists as we did for the Manhattan Project. The next best thing we can do - and it is critical that we do it - is to reach out and tap into that pool of expertise that resides in the public-health sector, and the chemical and biotech industries. During last spring and summer, two distinguished officials - Admiral David Jeremiah and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - chaired separate panels that scrutinized the Intelligence Community's performance in two areas where we failed to provide adequate warning to our customers. A common theme in each report was that the Intelligence Community needed to be far more aggressive in engaging outside expertise in assessing issues of highest priority to our customers. This is especially true in the scientific and technical fields where the best expertise can be found in universities and industry. The DCI recently approved a strategic estimates program, to be managed by the National Intelligence Council, that has at its core a drive to bring experts such as you here tonight into our production effort to help ensure that we get the issues and analyses right and point our collection efforts against the correct targets. To that end, the DCI has created a senior scientist position within CIA's Nonproliferation Center, and has just hired Dr. Thomas Monath, whom many of you may know as one of the world's leading arbovirologists, to fill this part-time position. Tom remains Vice President of Research and Medical Affairs at OraVax, Inc., a biopharmaceutical firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Before joining OraVax in 1992, he had a distinguished career in public service as the Chief of the Virology Division at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and as Medical Director of the Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control in Fort Collins, Colorado. When I look at this distinguished audience, I can spot just the kind of talent we need to attract. And I know that Tom will be here tomorrow and Wednesday working the crowd. I urge you to consider how you might contribute to the defense of our country against the mounting BCW threat. With respect to intelligence support for monitoring regimes: almost by definition, efforts are heavily oriented toward state actors. I would only repeat the obvious point that international strategies for monitoring and controlling proliferation by non-state actors is an area that governments and inter-governmental treaties and intelligence communities, including ours, are still trying to get their arms around. The CWC is a step in the right direction because it mandates legislation criminalizing production of chemical weapons, giving law enforcement authorities greater ability to preempt chemical attacks. That said, had the CWC been in effect at the time of the Tokyo subway incident, it probably would have had no preventive effect, because the Aum group assembled its CW capabilities largely through its own member scientists and network of front companies. We need to think more about how we can exert US leadership to heighten international awareness of the growing BCW threat. I do not think that even friendly governments fully recognize how ominous the trends are. America today is less aware and prepared for the effects of a chemical or biological attack than it should be. As important as I think that statement is, you should know that other countries are even less aware and less prepared. We also need to reinforce the message - and the Departments of State and Defense can play key roles here - that non-proliferation efforts do not benefit the United States alone - they benefit everyone on the planet Earth, except, of course, the proliferators. To the maximum extent possible, nonproliferation initiatives should be multinational. Even though other countries may not have the range of capabilities the US has to counter the BCW threat, they can still contribute in other ways, for instance, diplomatically or by virtue of being uniquely situated to provide key information. OTHER INTELLIGENCE DILEMMAS So, that's the big picture. Now, let me take you to a window on some practical dilemmas that US Intelligence professionals constantly face as they work to counter the BCW threat. Some of these dilemmas are not exclusive to our BCW work; they apply to intelligence work and arms control efforts in general. I'll mention the most vexing, without getting into too much "inside baseball." First dilemma. In a perfect world, Intelligence always heads off the bad guys at the pass before they can do any damage. In an almost perfect world, we catch them red-handed with the smoking gun. But, in our far less-than-perfect world, no matter how hard we work or how many assets we bring to bear, we still may be able only to find pieces of an ominous puzzle. It is our duty to inform policymakers of what we know - even when our information is, admittedly, incomplete. Why? So that our political leaders can take prudent steps to protect American lives and defend American interests. Second dilemma. When we find the smoking gun, we rarely can get full use of the discovery. We must balance the policy benefits of using it against damage to sources and methods. The most compelling evidence is often the most sensitive as well. If we share this information with another government, we run serious risk of losing a human asset or compromising another important source. Telling our story in public is even more risky, but we have been called upon to do that on several occasions in the BCW arena. Following the controversy over the Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, we released more information than we would have liked. The sad result in many such cases is that it can become more difficult to do our job in the future. This is an age-old trade-off that comes from the continuous give-and-take between the Intelligence Community and its customers in the policy community. Another dilemma. Our intelligence information is often unwelcome to those who selfishly resort to plausible deniability for reasons of political expediency. There have been many cases in which we tried to stop shipments of BCW-related material to proliferants, only to have the supplier-country smugly reply that, since there were some legitimate uses for these goods and we could not prove that they were solely intended for BCW use, it would not stop the transaction. One final dilemma. No matter what we say or do, what we say and do will be subject to controversy and scrutiny in our democracy. Make no mistake: we'd rather we had a vigorous democracy and the dilemma than no democracy and no dilemma! But, our adversaries' propaganda and their denial and deception strategies for BCW exploit our dilemma in every way they can. Many countries were able to carry out illicit programs for years under a cloak of legitimacy. Libya still insists that its chemical weapons plant at Rabta is a pharmaceutical plant. The Iraqis called their CW production facility a pesticide plant and their main BW facility an animal feed plant. We found solid evidence of CW activity at Shifa in Khartoum. Sophisticated tests done on soil samples revealed the presence of EMPTA, a key precursor for the nerve agent VX. Perhaps if our information had been derived by less technical means, means more readily understood by the public, the case would not have been received with such skepticism. But, I emphasize, the evidence was solid. Moreover, the evidence fit into the ominous pattern we had been piecing together against bin Ladin and his network. Bin Ladin had attacked Americans before and he said he planned to do so again. He was seeking CW to use in future attacks. He was cooperating with the government of Sudan in those efforts. Shifa was linked to bin Ladin and CW. We brought the evidence and our analyses to the President, and he took decisive action. All these dilemmas come with the intelligence territory. Dedicated intelligence officers must confront and deal with them case by case, bringing our professional experience and our best judgment to bear, as we did in the case of Shifa. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Almost a decade has passed since Secretary Shultz made his impassioned plea for adoption of the Chemical Weapons Convention and challenged the international community to do better. He was right then and he is right now. We can and we must do better. We no longer live in a bipolar world where deterrence was more straightforward and kept the nuclear and BCW threat at bay. Over the past ten years, the threat has become much greater .We face more proliferators, more elusive and sophisticated targets, and a whole new array of BCW agents. The growing BCW threat cannot be met by US Intelligence alone, but US Intelligence will be crucial in meeting it. As I said at the outset, to deal effectively with the evolving BCW challenge, we all need to think together and work together in new ways. National and local governments, the military, medical world, law enforcement, private sector, the academic and scientific communities, the media, the communities you and I live in all across our country, and the world as well - all of us must contribute. Let me close with a caveat, or, better put, an appeal for context. Woody Allen tells us that mankind today is at a crossroads. One path leads to hopelessness and despair, the other to total annihilation. Is my message tonight simply a variation on Woody's theme? If you don't get hit by a North Korean ICBM over the next five years, chances are you will suffer a horrible, premature death when Usama bin Ladin poisons your hometown water supply! Surely, we want to do more in this conference than set each other's hair on fire and try to put it out with a hammer! I call the BCW threat grave today at least in part because we have not collectively defined the problem and joined forces to deal with it. We are, as a result, more open to a serious incident and to surprise in general. This should make us pessimistic today. But it need not remove the possibility of a more hopeful outlook tomorrow - if we get on top of the problem. Believe it or not, after twenty years in the intelligence business, I still remain optimistic about the future of mankind and about the potential of America's people and institutions to assure that future. My hope is that this conference will develop a set of concrete action items to get us moving in harness against the BCW threat. I want to assure you that the US Intelligence Community is ready and eager to do its part. Let me stop here. I look forward to your questions and comments. Remarks of National Intelligence Council Chairman John C. Gannon QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION November 16, 1998 Q: A comment and a question. The comment is simply that the United States, with its very large acreage planted in the monoculture of single … crops, and with very extensive regulation trade in animals, is uniquely vulnerable to biological attack on its animal and plant resources and I hope that the Intelligence Community is paying attention to this as well as to any human BW. The question is basically - bluntly - how good is intelligence? As far as I understand, not having a security clearance and not wanting one, I believe that we missed entirely Iraq's biological weapons program. I think that we knew that they had something going on. We identified one or two research sites. We missed their production sites. We had no idea they were weaponizing anything, nor that they had filled munitions. Perhaps I'm doing a disservice to our analysis at the time. Hopefully, the lessons of Iraq have been learned and we are now scrambling to repair those capabilities. But I guess my question is how good is intelligence in identifying and accurately delineating the scope and nature of developing BW programs in proliferating nations? Mr. Gannon: I would, simply, meet your comment with a comment. I think our record on Iraq is better than you've suggested. It is not perfect. Our effort to deal with this threat relies increasingly on outside expertise. I think that is one of the points I made in the speech. You cannot expect that an intelligence community, if it allows itself to be insulated from the outside, is going to be able to deal effectively with these challenges. We need to develop not just contacts with the outside, we need to develop partnerships, where we have sustained access to the kind of expertise we need to deal with these problems. So there is no question … if your comment meant that we need to do better, I agree with you. But I would not accept your full condemnation of the past. I think our record is much better than you suggest. Q: This is not a "beat up the CIA" question, but … over the years I have the impression that there's been a degradation in the human intelligence activities of the CIA, that is, the assets we have with regard to human intelligence, and a reliance a lot on technical intelligence. Related to that is the question of how we really do relate with other intelligence communities throughout the world and whether there is a protocol for a sharing of information that obviously we clearly need in today's world. I would appreciate you comments. Mr. Gannon: Sure. Let me start with the last part first. I think our cooperation with liaison services is better than it has ever been, partly because we recognize that in issues like proliferation we -- as the surviving global intelligence service -- can provide the big picture, but we critically need the small piece[s] that liaison services provide about the issues within their own countries. We, therefore, are aggressively pursuing close relationships that matter in issues such as proliferation. You're right about decline in HUMINT. We now have as a part of our strategic plan a concerted effort to rebuild HUMINT. This is not to reproduce what existed during the Cold War but to recognize that we need to know motivations and intentions of leaders and governments. There is nothing to beat HUMINT in providing us that information. This also includes BCW issues and proliferation in general. We are over the next several years going to be rebuilding HUMINT against very clear targets in a post-Cold War period. But I would accept your general assessment that there was a decline that we need to address. Mr. Shultz: Could I make a comment on that … when you put forward human intelligence you find yourself necessarily dealing with a lot of people who are not admirable. Some of the people you have to employ or deal with are not too admirable themselves in many respects. You have to figure out whether you are going to believe them or not and how you are going to deal with it. So it is a tough business. The intelligence effort is also constantly second-guessed. If you must be a "white knight," and never go near anything that is a little soiled, if that is your approach, you are never going to find out anything. On the other hand, if you dig in maybe you will have some associations you will not like. It is easy to say "yes, we should have better human intelligence" but people in this country have to face up to what that means. It is hard. Mr. Gannon: If I could just elaborate on the point you just made … when I have been out in gatherings like this and the issue that you just raised comes up I ask the question: "If someone you love was captured by terrorists, and I told you that I might be able to develop a strategy to get inside the network to find where your loved one is being held, but to do so I would have to deal with unsavory characters … what is the answer to the question … should I do it or not?" So I think when our nation's interests are involved we also need to take risks and deal with unsavory people. But I am proud to say that the people in the Intelligence Community whom I know who do this are people of great character and integrity. Q: I am John Millis. I am the staff director of the intelligence committee in the House of Representatives. I do not have a question, John, my leg fell asleep and I wanted an excuse to stand up! Seriously, I do not have a question. I did want to say something though. One of the things we are supposed to do on the committee is to try and make an assessment of where the Intelligence Community does a job well and does not do a job well. Every month the Nonproliferation Center produces a digest. It is called the Proliferation Digest. It is typically around 90 pages long. It is classified at all the highest levels of top secrecy with all the various code words attached to it. The 90 pages typically include about 4- or 5-page summaries of significant developments that they see around the world. In addition to that, there are typically about 7 to 8 pages where they have other developments that they are spotting that do not quite merit the 4 or 5 pages in this digest. So there would be typically, again, maybe 20 [or] 25 such developments. It is far and away, without question, the best product turned out by the Intelligence Community in my point of view. That is not to say it is good enough. I think [that] to do the job well it would have to be much, much …[it would] need more money? … you cannot use that excuse, we sent you more money, John! It needs to be better. But one of the things that the chairman of my committee once said … he said "It is a shame I can't go out and show the American people this particular product." It would do tremendous damage to the US if we did that because of all the sensitive information in it. But I do not think anybody would ask the question "What good is intelligence if they saw one copy of this monthly publication. It is quite incredible. John, I did not have a question for you and I hope I am not asking it. Perhaps the Secretary [i.e., Mr. Shultz] will allow someone else to do so. But you did not answer the first question well, as you do not on the Hill as well, so I felt I had to jump up and defend you! Mr. Gannon: I would say that the State Department usually controls the format and Congress gets equal time! I also noted that the Secretary said that we would not have dinner until I finished my speech. I guess what he meant is that I will not have dinner. They are all eating, sir! Mr. Shultz: Well, John, we thank you very, very much. That was really good, comprehensive, thoughtful, interesting. Very informative for us all and we are grateful to you. It gives us a feeling that people in our Intelligence Community know what they are doing. That helps! Thank you very much.