Senator Wants Bioterrorism Manhattan Project ("BioTerrorGreatest Threat Facing US")(Terror Update)

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Describing bioterrorism as the greatest threat facing the United States, Georgia Democratic Sen. Max Cleland called on Monday on the federal government to face the problem with the same determination it displayed in developing nuclear weapons during World War Two.

In a panel discussion at Emory University in Atlanta, Cleland said the U.S. government should streamline its bureaucracy and free up funds for a new "Manhattan Project" to be led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Atlanta-based CDC, a federal agency responsible for monitoring public health threats, has led the medical investigation into an outbreak of anthrax bacteria linked to letters mailed after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Four people have died and 13 others have been infected with the disease during the outbreak.

"This is a race for the best minds, the best talent and the best technology we can find in the realm of biological, chemical and radiological warfare," said Cleland, who was joined by CDC Director Jeffrey Koplan, Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes and several public health advocates.

Cleland, who is sponsoring a bill that would give the Department of Health and Human Services more power to declare and respond to public health emergencies, said it was essential that a bioterrorism strategy be developed within three years.

"If we don't put our best foot forward, have the best facilities and have the best minds, I think you would be threatening the national security of the United States," Cleland said.

Both the HHS and the CDC were criticized last month for appearing slow to respond to the public's fears of anthrax and other bioterrorist threats.

More than 32,000 Americans were forced to start taking antibiotics after anthrax-laced letters were sent to media outlets and to the Capitol Hill office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat.

There has not been a new case of anthrax since Oct. 31 when a New York hospital worker died of the more severe inhaled version of the disease.

The CDC's Koplan admitted the outbreak had been a "trying time" for the agency, but he noted that the CDC had succeeded in its main objective of containing the anthrax contamination after the first group of confirmed cases.

"There have been lots of successes as we've gone along and it includes a limited number of cases of disease," Koplan said.

G E N E V A , Nov. 19 — The United States today accused Iraq, North Korea and possibly Iran of violating an international treaty banning weapons of germ warfare and said Syria and Libya might be able to produce biological weapons.

U.S. Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton said Iraq had "developed, produced and stockpiled biological warfare agents and weapons" despite having signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. "We are also quite concerned about Iran, which the United States believes probably has produced and weaponized BW (biological weapons) agents in violation of the Convention," he told a convention review conference in Geneva.

The conference aims to evaluate progress in agreeing steps to tighten the 30-year-old ban, a move given new impetus by the recent anthrax attacks in the United States that followed the Sept. 11 mass killings by suicide plane hijackers in New York and Washington.

Earlier this year, the United States rejected as "unworkable" a proposed new protocol for the treaty that should have made it easier to check if member states were abiding by it.

Although the United States was heavily criticized for blocking the protocol, the result of more than five years of negotiations, Bolton said the plan would have done nothing to deter states bent on arming themselves with weapons of germ warfare.

"Countries that joined the BWC and then ignored their commitments and certain non-state actors would never have been hampered by the protocol," Bolton said.

Washington has tabled a number of alternative proposals for tightening the convention, including a call to member states to pass laws imposing severe penalties on anybody involved in activities violating the treaty as well as making it easy for those accused in another country to be extradited.

Bolton told the opening session of the three-week conference that Washington believed North Korea had developed and produced and may have weaponized germ warfare agents, while Syria and Libya could be capable of producing small quantities and Sudan had displayed interest in doing so.

From ABC Here:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/iraq011119_germs.html

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MULLAH OVERSAW

November 19, 2001 -- Afghanistan's Taliban chiefs reportedly took an unusual interest in a veterinary lab that produced millions of doses of anthrax vaccine. After the Islamic militia seized power in 1996, it moved the lab from the northern town of Charikar to the capital of Kabul, and a mullah was brought in to supervise the operation, the London Mirror says today.

"He and his Taliban superiors were interested in the technical detail of what happened here, although they had no background in science," said Dr. Abdul Quader Raoufi, the anti-Taliban director of the lab. "Sometimes, many of their officials would turn up unannounced . . . We'd rather have been running the labs on our own. But the mullahs were in charge of everything."

He added that there was danger information "could get into the wrong hands," and the Taliban could have learned how to handle and develop anthrax at the lab.

U.S. authorities say they found no link between the Taliban or Osama bin Laden and anthrax-laced letters mailed to U.S. media and politicians.

MORE than 80% of Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network is outside Afghanistan and even if he is killed or captured, his supporters will continue to pose a threat, according to experts who have studied the organisation, writes Nick Fielding.

There are thought to be about 10,000 Al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. Shortly before the September 11 attacks, members of the network were told to return there. Others, including some from Britain, flew out to join the organisation once the American air attacks started.

But this is only a minority of the foreign Muslims who have passed through the nine camps run by Al-Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan and are now scattered throughout the world. In the wake of the American attacks, cells have been uncovered in Germany, France, Spain and the United States.

However, investigators have failed to track down key middlemen responsible for back-up and funding. In Germany, where the conspiracy was hatched, the authorities have identified at least five Al-Qaeda members believed to be the "missing links" but have insufficient evidence to persuade prosecutors of their guilt.

They remain at large — as do Mohammed Ahmed, who received £70,000 wired to him in Dubai from the hijackers in the US, and Abu Zubaydah, believed to be a key organiser in Europe. The classic cell structure operated by Al-Qaeda, where there is little if any contact between each unit, makes it almost impossible to penetrate.

German intelligence officials believe up to 70,000 people from 50 countries may have been trained. Horst Stachelscheid, a director of Germany's domestic intelligence service, told a conference last week that Al-Qaeda was responsible for "strategic attacks", such as those on America, but associated groups carried out lower-level ones.

Even without their leader, these lower-level groups will continue to pose a threat for years to come. "Certainly, we don't expect the death or capture of Bin Laden to mark the end of this," said one American intelligence source. "In fact, we are expecting something pretty horrible here [in the US] precisely because of the developments in Afghanistan."

Finance from disaffected wealthy Muslims will provide dormant cells with the money they need to mount operations. Al-Qaeda fighters are trained to bide their time and blend into their adopted communities.

wooden, prefabricated cantonment structures for barracks and administrative buildings. Among those buildings still standing are the former Noncommissioned Officers Club (Building T-115),

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I spent many a pleasant evening at that place 40 years ago with charming ladies from near-by Hood College.

The dates in the history on development of agent orange are wrong. By 1961 and 62 two research chiefs at Detrick had $10,000 bounties placed on their heads by the viet cong and the north vietnamese due to their development of orange..

Is it legal to just hang the whole Senate right now for reasons of national security? I think that the US Senate is the biggest threat to the American people that we face today.

Well, now Cleland seems to have lost his head in defense of his own political power. Being a wounded veteran doesn't give a man an excuse for turning to communism, whatever you might think.

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