ANSER Institute for Homeland Security post-911 plans before 911 happened EXPOSED

[birther truther tenther]

Covered in cyberdust, found with the Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010820154757/www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/Articles/article.cfm?article=6







FULL TEXT REPOST:

The Best Homeland Defense is a Good Counterterrorism Offense
Ambassador Michael A. Sheehan
Coordinator for Counterterrorism
U.S. Department of State
October 2000





Michael Sheehan has served as Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Department of State since December 1998. His office has primary responsibility for developing, coordinating, and implementing U.S. counterterrorism policy. The office chairs the Interagency Working Group for Counterterrorism and the Department of State's task force that responds to international terrorist incidents. Previously Sheehan was a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs where he worked on UN reform and peacekeeping policy in the former Yugoslavia. From 1995 to 1997, he also served in the White House on the National Security Council staff as Director of International Organizations and Peacekeeping. From 1993 to 1995, he was Director of Political Military Affairs and Special Counselor to Ambassador Madeleine Albright at the U.S. Mission to the UN in New York.

The United States is among the world's leaders in homeland defense; our efforts to strengthen our security continue unabated every day. However, as we continue to bolster our defenses, we need to continue to monitor and counter the changing threat of international terrorism, which is forcing us to expand the scope of our homeland defense. With the rapid changes occurring in the domestic and international environment, we must develop an "active defense" outside the United States, to guard against threats emanating from overseas and to protect American citizens and assets abroad. Without this expansion in scope, even the best domestic homeland defense-a "Fortress America"-leaves the United States and its citizens vulnerable.

     There are several trends that have redefined the playing field for those involved in homeland defense. First, American citizens, assets, and interests are increasingly found outside of the United States, thus forcing us to protect ourselves on non-American soil, as well as in the U.S. With the expansion of American companies and NGOs in the international realm, U.S. engagement in humanitarian and military operations abroad, and the growth of international tourism and education - to name a few trends - Americans can be found in almost every country in the world at any given time. Very few international flights fly without an American aboard. Thus, it was no surprise when we learned that an American citizen was among the hostages taken aboard the Air India flight that was hijacked on December 24, 1999. This was not a flight to or from the U.S., but rather a quick hop between Nepal and India, yet an American citizen was on board. We must look to safeguard our interests abroad, just as we have defended those on American soil.

     Second, the threat to Americans-whether residing within the country or abroad-is often planned and perpetrated from outside the U.S. A disproportionate number of threats come from individuals who have never seen and may never see the shores of the United States. This is made easier by today's highly developed communication and transportation systems. We must look to fight, disrupt, and intercept these threats from their origins or while they are in transit to a target, not wait for them to reach their objective.

     The front line has moved from the shores of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to the city centers of Khandahar and Tehran. We must think of our homeland defense to include these areas, as well as our own shore and territories. Soccer offers us a useful illustration of how we should design an effective defense. If a soccer team starts defending first when the attacker is just feet away from the goal, the team has already lost. Only through a constant comprehensive press at every corner of the field can a team expect to fully defend against an attack. Likewise, we must fight against terrorism on every front-whether in the Middle East, South Asia, or Latin America-rather than just on our shores.

     A review of two recent terrorist incidents-one successful and one aborted-illustrates this shifting front line, and provides us with important lessons on how to expand our homeland defense.

     The bombings of our embassies in East Africa show how networks of terrorists have formed a nexus of support for attacks thousands of miles away.

     The plot for the 1998 attack on the American Embassy in Nairobi was actually hatched five years earlier. Initial reconnaissance of our embassy began in 1994, further planning continued in 1996.

     The strategic direction of this attack came from South Asia, more specifically from Usama bin Ladin who was based in Afghanistan. Operational control and other support worked its way through at least two other countries in Europe and Africa and spanned thousands of miles over vast oceans and deserts. In addition, this attack was conducted simultaneously with a similar embassy bombing in Dar es Salaam, over 500 miles to the south of Nairobi. The coordination of these two attacks shows a high level of planning and an enormous global reach.

     The recent arrests over the millennium tell a similar story, and bring the situation closer to home. On December 14, 1999, Algerian Ahmed Ressam was arrested by U.S. Customs agents as he attempted to transport illegal explosive materials across the Canadian border at Port Angeles, Washington. Just weeks later, Jordanian officials arrested a handful of operatives planning an attack on a tourist site and hotel in Israel during the millennium celebrations. In both cases, an international web of links unfolded through the investigation. In both cases, American citizens were directly targeted.

     Although the planning and targeting of these terrorist incidents took place years and miles apart, they show how today's terrorists can come from the farthest reaches of the world to threaten our citizens, whether they are in Washington State, the Middle East, Africa, or elsewhere.

     In addition to this web of international terrorists, there are numerous threats emanating from other corners of the world. The deaths of five Americans in 1999 show the vulnerability of Americans in other corners of the world. In March, 1999 the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) kidnapped three U.S. Indian rights activists, took them to Venezuela, and brutally murdered them. In Bwindi National Forest in Uganda two American tourists were killed by Rwandan Hutu rebels who raided three tourist's camps in the same month. In all of 1999, the only Americans killed at the hands of terrorists were neither diplomats or soldiers, nor employees working in government buildings, but rather civilians caught up in local events who were murdered because of their nationality.

     So how do we defend against this seemingly limitless threat on a seemingly limitless set of targets? Build 20-foot walls around multinational firms? Turn our embassies into bunkered fortresses? Turn our back on allies that need our military or humanitarian engagement abroad? Tell Americans to stay home?

     None of the above.

     Isolating ourselves against a world with whom we must engage is a mistake. Rather than turning inward and isolating ourselves, we must develop a proactive offense to fight the threat where it originates and where we are threatened. This means cracking down on countries that house terrorists who threaten us, putting the squeeze on terrorists as they travel around the world, and hardening potential targets. We cannot do this alone; fortunately, we don't have to. Many countries share our condemnation of terrorism and are similarly threatened. Therefore creating a community of allies that are intolerant of terrorism and threats is essential to developing a long-term sustainable international strategy to defend our homeland. Just as many Americans in cities across the U.S. have taken a stance on crime, creating communities that will not tolerate criminal violence in their communities, we should seek to create a similar "community" of zero tolerance for terrorism.

     In order to develop a comprehensive international homeland defense, we must understand the latest threats to the United States and its interests and engage with our international partners in a coordinated effort to disrupt terrorist activity, deny terrorists sanctuary, bolster the counterterrorist capability of those states willing to fight terrorists (but unable to do so effectively) and isolate those states that refuse to vigorously fight terrorism.

     Terrorism has changed since the 1970's and 1980's, when most Americans first became aware of the threat. Then we witnessed numerous airline hijackings, kidnappings, hostage situations, and ruthless bombings of civilian targets such as the international airports in Rome, Vienna, and Athens. The primary motivation of terrorists in the 70s and 80s was political. We fought leftist groups, separatists, and other politically motivated actors. Latin America, the Middle East and Asia were swarming with groups fighting for changes in existing political structures, borders, and leadership. Another common feature of those decades was the prominent role that states played in supporting terrorist activities. Some state sponsors routinely used terror as an instrument of state policy to attack their opponents, both foreign and domestic.

     Today, the threat is different. State sponsorship has declined significantly in the past ten years. Today's terrorist threat comes primarily from non-state actors with less direct ties to governments, such as Usama bin Laden and the al-Qaida terrorist network associated with him. Terrorists are acting on their own and are resorting to car bombs, suicide bombings, and attacks on civilian buildings and diplomatic posts.

     They have their own funding networks-through narcotrafficing, fund-raising fronts, private businesses, independent wealth, and local financial support. They are individually recruiting new members. In many states where the government is weak in providing basic public services, these groups create parallel public institutions, such as schools, health services, and social networks. Through this outreach, independent terrorist networks are able to make inroads into communities and recruit new members-which in turn provide them operational security for their activities. They are also exploiting volatile areas, such as Chechnya and Dagestan. Their infusion of resources and training into conflict-ripe areas makes for a very deadly mix.

     Today, the principal motivations behind most terrorist movements are primarily religious and cultural, such as "ending western influence," are not bound to a particular territory, and are not primarily focused on a specific political objective. Cultural and/or religious ideology forms the basis for their activities and provides a platform for rallying support among the general population. In general, these non-state actors exhibit less restraint than state actors and other groups did in past decades. They are less concerned about killing random civilians, whether the civilians are standing at an Israeli bus stop, worshipping in a church in Colombia, or walking in front of an American Embassy in Africa. Their choice of victim is no longer a specific political target, but rather anyone who they consider opposed to their ideology, often with little concern for innocent bystanders.

     Rather than focusing on different, distinct target groups, or issues, like-minded terrorists have formed an international network linked by common ideology and enmity for the West, particularly for the United States. As the remaining superpower, the U.S. is often blamed for many of today's troubles and therefore is the target of choice for retaliation. This loose network can be engaged through informal connections and mobilized to conduct acts throughout the world.

     Terrorists are also expanding their choice of targets. Rather than attacking Washington or other capitals, terrorists often target "softer" official targets, such as remote consulates or military bases, or even unofficial targets, such as American business or cultural interests. Usama bin Ladin's recent attacks and plans prove this point. Rather than attacking the United States homeland, he picked weakly protected American Embassies in Africa, where he knew his operatives could move and operate more freely. During the millennium, his operatives focused on tourist sites and hotels in the Middle East.

     Terrorists are taking advantage of technological advances in communications, transportation, and money transfer to plan and implement international operations. The Internet is used by many to share messages and recruit new members, while electronic mail and other newer technologies are used to communicate from Afghanistan to Kenya to Yemen and around the world. Today, a planner can sit in Afghanistan, order the movement of men, money and materials through several other countries, and attack in another country half way around the world. That is how the attacks in Kenya and Tanzania occurred.

     It is not only who is striking and where they are striking, but also how they are striking that should concern those working in homeland defense. Technological advances have expanded the terrorists "toolbox." Terrorists are increasingly using the Internet and computers as a means of communication, command and control, and propaganda dissemination. They are actively pursuing chemical and biological capabilities, and some-like Aum Shinrikyo-have actually used such weapons against innocent civilians.

     The good news on this front is that chemical and biological materials are hard to weaponize, and therefore, remain out of reach of many terrorists. Once again, the key is to limit the freedom of movement and resources of terrorists and to deny them sanctuary to research and pursue WMD capabilities. This type of offensive action-limiting or stopping a terrorist well before an attack has happened-is essential to our security.

     In summary, these international threats to our homeland are complex and multifaceted, and need a sophisticated, multidimensional response. First, we must continue to pressure those states that support terrorism or provide sanctuary to terrorists. Afghanistan and Iran are the two biggest current terrorist supporting threats to the United States. Our terrorism-related sanctions against the Taliban and the current Iranian government should remain intact until they change their policies. Sanctions have worked to minimize Libyan and other states' support for terrorism, and will work with these two countries, if we stay the course.

     Likewise, we must urge those governments that allow terrorists to use their countries as transit points, material procurement sites, or temporary rest stops, to block their activities. Limiting terrorists' movement or access to material will disrupt their planning and operations. In addition, we need to shore up those places that are potential targets. This means bolstering local capabilities to monitor airports, patrol streets, and investigate activity. For foreign-based U.S. officials, business people, and tourists, foreign security officials are the first line of defense against a terrorist threat abroad.

     All of these activities require strong engagement with other countries, both our allies and our adversaries. The full cooperation of our allies and the change of behavior of our adversaries are imperatives to reducing the terrorist threat to Americans.

     While we tend to focus our homeland defense efforts on domestic threats to America- based citizens, we must now look outside our borders for the threats and the threatened. Equally important, we must look even more widely beyond our borders for solutions and partners.




Do your own research:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.homelandsecurity.org

ANSER Homeland Security is the precursor to the post-9/11 public DHS we are all familiar with now.  Please do me and the rest of the Patriot Community a favor and comb through all of these old school articles within their site, and analyze them.

[birther truther tenther]

WOW!

This article is shocking!

Retrieved from:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010820153110/www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/Articles/article.cfm?article=2

FULL TEXT:

American Deterrence Theory and Homeland Defense

Dr. George H. Quester
University of Maryland
October 2000

George H. Quester is a Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, where he teaches courses on International relations, U.S. Foreign Policy, and International Military Security. He has taught previously at Cornell and Harvard universities, at UCLA, and at the United States Naval Academy and the National War College. Dr. Quester is the author of a number of books and articles on international security issues, and on broader questions of international relations, and he is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Most Americans have come to terms with the fact that their homeland has not been physically secure since World War II. The introduction of nuclear weapons, with the airplanes and missiles to deliver them, has meant that our homes and lives could be destroyed within less than an hour of Moscow's decision to attack.

     Only a few of such Americans have bad dreams each night about a nuclear holocaust, or still flinch each time they see a bright flash of light, wondering whether they should dive under the nearest desktop.[1]

     A few others may be unaware of such nuclear threats,[2] or may instead be convinced that we must have erected and maintained anti-missile and anti-bomber air defense systems to preclude this destruction.

     For a larger number of people, the coping with this basic threat to the homeland has instead involved some rough-and-ready internalization of the basics of mutual deterrence, whether or not they have been walked through this by the basic "guns and rockets" courses on "International Military Security" that are now offered on the curriculum of virtually every American university.

     If any foreign country would destroy our cities, we would get even by destroying their cities. And thus such a foreign power is very unlikely to initiate such a destructive exchange, and we can turn our attention to other things. So goes a logic that relatively fewer Americans can present very explicitly, but which most probably carry around in their heads intuitively, making it possible for all of us to visit the "ground-zeros" of potential nuclear attacks without dwelling on the risk.[3]

Learning About Deterrence

     It took a while for this logic and its calming effect to sink in with most Americans, and some would argue that it is a far-from-perfect kind of reassurance. Many of us can remember the civil defense drills that were part of a public school education in the 1950s. After the first detection of a Soviet nuclear weapons test in 1949, popular magazines in the United States produced a spate of articles on what such atomic bombs might do to New York or Washington. And the aftermath of the first hydrogen-bomb tests in the mid-1950s produced even grimmer analyses on how the width of the crater at Eniwetok compared with the length of Manhattan.[4]

     The exposure of the American homeland to foreign attack made it much easier for the newly independent U.S. Air Force to get Americans to consider threat from across the top of the globe and not just across the ocean. A look at a polar-projection map of the Northern Hemisphere, rather than the traditional Mercator projection map (which had always made the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans seem like such an insurmountable moat protecting us) showed how easy it would be for a foreign enemy to strike Kansas, and not just at New York or California.

     If the Air Force could enlist this new geographical awareness of vulnerability to win support for some attempts at homeland defense, in the investment in NORAD, the reassurance to the American people in the end came with SAC, in the ability to hit back at the USSR crossing the same polar icecaps, and thus to protect the homeland by deterrence.

"A New Idea"?

     If deterrence was the antidote to homeland vulnerability in the 1950s and 1960s, how new an idea was deterrence, and how new a problem was homeland vulnerability? There have been theorists of deterrence who would have assumed that the entire phenomenon was the product of aviation's having opened up the third-dimension for warfare, as airplanes could deliver bombs to hit an adversary's homeland cities, even if no victory had yet been won on the ground battlefields to open such cities up to punishment, indeed even if the adversary's forces were winning the ground battle. This kind of third-dimension warfare was of course reinforced by missiles, and by submarines slipping under an adversary's dominance of surface naval warfare, and it was most powerfully reinforced by the introduction of nuclear weapons.

     Yet one already finds many discussions of homeland vulnerability, and of mutual deterrence, in the analyses of future aerial warfare put forward at the end of World War I.[5] British and other analysts (Douhet is far from alone in such analysis, and is not the most profound example) put forward projections of future aerial bombing campaigns that look more like World War III than like World War II, with assumptions that poison gas would be used in the air attacks on cities, thus forecasting a much greater devastation than London was to suffer in 1940. (We will say more a little later about the advantages of having prepared a home population for a worse attack than actually materializes.) And, for a number of such inter-war analysts, the solution, the way to handling the prospect of such great misery, was mutual deterrence. Each side could hit the other's homeland, and thus each might hold back as long as the other held back.[6]

     American writers on air warfare entered somewhat into this discussion of future bombing scenarios. After Charles Lindbergh demonstrated that one could fly across the Atlantic Ocean, the threat became somewhat more real: that what London had experienced in the bombings of 1914 to 1918 (very mild compared to World War II, but indeed causing much more panic among Londoners) might befall New York or Chicago in the next war.[7]

     Yet one can go back even a little further to look for American experience with homeland vulnerability, and for any enunciations of the concept of "deterrence". The American coastline was all along vulnerable to the British Navy or any other hostile navy, and so was American commerce.[8] Americans have always been a commercial people, and the sinking of American merchant ships has always hit Americans "at home". The National Anthem of the United States commemorates the defense of Baltimore against British attack, in the immediate aftermath of the British amphibious invasion, that had destroyed Washington.

     Sir Julian Corbett argued at the end of the nineteenth century that this British ability to harass the merchant commerce of adversaries, as well as their coastlines, should not in any way be renounced, by the treaties being proposed by the United States and other countries, because this would give up Britain's "great deterrent".[9] Thus, even before airplanes and missiles and nuclear weapons, the world's homelands had become vulnerable to the counter-value attack of an adversary; and the strategic calculation had loomed that the mere prospect of such an attack could deter, could influence.
World War I

     Commerce on the high seas has made Americans feel vulnerable at home, and so has the concomitants of such trade, allowing foreign nationals to come to our country and reside in it for long periods, ostensibly as they are buying our goods. Americans in 1914 might have felt like celebrating the 100th anniversary of the last foreign invasion of their homeland, but, as World War I began, they started to feel two kinds of new homeland vulnerability.

     First, the Great War saw Britain interfering with American ships trying to sail to Germany, and then saw Germany relying on submarines to attack similar ships going to Britain. The latter kind of attack was much more dangerous to human life and property, of course, but both interferences with American "freedom of the seas" produced indignation in the United States, and a frustrated debate about how to respond.

     As American munitions factories found a major market in Britain and France, and were unable to deliver similar goods to Germany because of the British control of the ocean surface, one then also began to see sabotage of such factories, exemplified most vividly by the "Black Tom" explosion at a New Jersey dock just opposite Manhattan, shaking the Brooklyn Bridge and breaking windows all over New York City. As a forerunner of what we have to fear today, German agents even experimented with a primitive form of biological warfare. They attempted to inflict the horses procured in America for the British or French cavalry with a disease called "glanders".[10]

     Illustrating what may be a major problem for future homeland defense, where "deterrence" may not be a satisfactory answer, the 1914-1917 vulnerability raised problems of who was accountable for the attacks (the German Embassy always disclaimed responsibility). Were the "terrorists", who were bringing the explosions and destruction of World War I right into the United States itself, definitely German agents? Or were they instead Irish opponents of British Imperial rule, or Bolshevik revolutionaries, in which case it would be much more difficult for Americans to know against whom to retaliate?

     The sabotage within the United States ended when World War I ended, and when American munitions makers no longer had customers to supply in Britain and France. It indeed ended earlier, as the police system of the United States was able to corral the agents hired by the German government, and the German Embassy itself was closed down before the American entry into the war.

     Some of the lawsuits, criminal and civil, on alleged German responsibility for sabotage were to be carried forward as late as the 1930s, as the American legal system dictated that justice be done, that guilt or innocence be established.[11] This experience thus supports a first important lesson for the future of homeland defense: it will remain very important that great efforts be made to uncover the perpetrators of such attacks, and to punish them, perhaps even after international wars have ended.

     As one worries about attacks on the homeland in the next century, one of our major concerns is thus indeed that such attacks can come in a form where it was not clear who had launched the attack, i.e. it will not be clear against whom retaliation should be launched. Americans knew who to strike back at, after the attack at Pearl Harbor, and they became fairly certain of whom to get angry at, and ultimately to strike back at (by entering the war), after the attacks on the Black Tom dock or the Lusitania. But they were somewhat less sure at first of who had launched the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Oklahoma City Federal Office Building, or on the American Embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es-Salaam.

     One immediate policy conclusion would thus seem to come to mind, that substantial investments need to be made in increasing our detective capacities for establishing who was to blame for any future attacks on the American homeland, not merely because of our sense of justice, but because deterrence requires that the prospective attacker face a great risk that his identity will be established, and that he will suffer punishment in retaliation.[12]

     Yet it is easier to spot the generic nature of a "solution" to the problem here, and less easy to be sure that such advances in detective capabilities will be achievable, even if substantial amounts of money are spent. The bad consequence of a widespread proliferation of the technologies for weapons of mass destruction is not just that possibly crazy political actors may get at the triggers of such weapons, but also that, when such a weapon is used, there will be a larger array of possible suspects.

The Evolution into the Cold War

     Some new German sabotage occurred at the outset of World War II, but on a smaller scale, and with less shock and outrage for an American public at seeing its homeland violated. No German air raids were launched on the North American homeland during World War II, and no serious Japanese air raids.

     The next serious wave of concern about the safety of North America loomed up nonetheless in the closing of World War II, as the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki offered a tangible illustration of what could befall any American city, once someone else acquired nuclear weapons, with this culminating in the discovery in 1949 that the Soviet Union had test-detonated such a weapon. And it was then in the wake of these nuclear events that the full-blown theory of mutual deterrence emerged, a theory that can only partially relieve the concerns of all of us who are no so vulnerable.

     If one combines the two historical experiences noted above, that of "Black Tom" and that of Hiroshima, one sets the stage for relating deterrence to homeland defense in the new century. If the Soviets inflicted the fate of Hiroshima on an American city, one would know against whom to retaliate, and the prospect of such retaliation thus might keep the disaster from ever happening. If one was in doubt about who had caused a dock to blow up across the Hudson River from Manhattan, Americans would be in more of quandary about who to punish, but the damage to the homeland, however frightening and unnerving, was not yet a disaster.

     But what if a rudimentary atomic bomb, or a comparably deadly chemical or biological weapon, is used against Manhattan, without the launcher of the attack being clear and obvious? What deters such an attack, what reassures us that the attack will not happen, when the launcher of the attack might not be identifiable, might not even be a state with territory of its own?
Two Other Important Lessons

     Aside from the need to enhance the identifiability of the attacker, two other lessons suggest themselves from these rounds of historical experience. As illustrated in the pluck of Londoners in 1940, who were much more exposed to attack than in 1914, but who flinched far less, much depends on conditioning a public in advance to how bad an attack might be, and thus toughening the public against that attack.[13] Almost all the forecasts of aerial bombardment printed before World War II exaggerated how bad it would be; the resilience of populations to such attacks might well have been the product of these excessive warnings.

     And much will depend on advertising to the outside world the toughness and resolve of one's homeland. An adversary who knows that Americans are unlikely to flinch, unlikely to make concessions in a contest of resolve, will be less likely to launch such homeland attacks in the first place.

     One of the big questions we will face in the next century entails predicting what the American reaction indeed will be if attacks are conducted against the American homeland, attacks that may kill many thousands of people.

     As a forerunner of the next century's threat to the homeland, which will most probably be heavily counter-value, heavily directed against homes and civilians, we have already mentioned the American shock at such attacks during our period of neutrality in World War I.

     To note an important distinction, someone defending the German sabotage programs of 1914 to 1917 could still have labeled them as overwhelmingly counterforce, as intended to deprive the British and French of the ammunition being assembled in the factories and docks where the bombs were being left. If windows were broken in Manhattan in the process, or American civilians were killed or wounded in the factories hit, these could be brushed off as collateral and inadvertent and unintended. Yet someone in Berlin and in the German Embassy might also have calculated that this civilian suffering might reduce American willingness to get into the war. "Bringing the war home" to the Americans might help in preventing "bringing America into the war".[14]

     Similarly, the sinking of ships in U-boat attacks was labeled as counterforce in all the German explanations for such attacks. Most shocking in particular to American feelings was the sinking of the Lusitania, with a great number of passengers being drowned as this British ocean liner went down, including some 128 American citizens. The German claim, at the time and ever since, was that the Lusitania carried munitions, thus accounting for the magnitude of the explosion when the German torpedo hit, and the rapidity of the ship's sinking thereafter.[15]

     Perhaps German planners were hoping to discourage American entry into the war by hitting the civilians, including American civilians, who felt at home on such a ship. But this would have been a terribly wrong-headed calculation, for the loss of the Lusitania played a major role in getting Americans ready to enter the war.

     More probably the German U-boat campaign was premised on the calculation that the sinking of merchant ships, and the denial of food imports to Britain, would inflict enough suffering on the British homeland to get London to negotiate a peace.

Good News: The Future Like the Past?

     A total of 128 Americans died on the Lusitania. What will be the American response if thousands die in a future nuclear, chemical, biological or even conventional attack on the American homeland?

     With the experiences of World War I and World War II, and of other wars, behind us, several generalizations can be offered.

     To begin, any foreign government, and any non-government foreign terrorist group, must be warned that it is easy to underrate the willingness of Americans to pursue these contests of endurance to a successful conclusion. Public opinion polls are notoriously misleading on whether Americans are ready to defend anything in the world. Such polling began only in the late 1930s, with the earliest sampling showing that most Americans felt it was a mistake to enter World War I, and that almost nothing was worth dispatching American forces for defense, with barely a majority even endorsing the defense of Hawaii![16]

     When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they were betting that Americans would not want to persist in a war to recover the Philippines and the other islands that Japan was seizing in the western Pacific, but would rather prefer to negotiate a peace based on the new status quo that the Japanese surprise attack had so suddenly created. This bet had been questioned by Admiral Yamamoto, the planner of the Pearl Harbor attack, who knew the United States well from having spent four years there, and who argued that the Americans would never surrender just because of the pain and suffering of persisting in the conflict, but would instead have to be totally militarily defeated, with "Yamamoto dictating peace terms in the White House". Since Yamamoto and all the other Japanese planners knew that such a Japanese military defeat of the United States was not possible, Yamamoto argued that the entire Japanese decision to launch the war was a mistake.[17]

     Stalin similarly had underestimated the American willingness to bear the burden of defending South Korea, and Saddam Hussein misread American willingness to pay the burdens of defending and liberating Kuwait. One might cite these examples to Communist leaders in Beijing, lest they underestimate American willingness to defend Taiwan.

     One prediction might thus be that a foreign attack on the American homeland will not frighten Americans into withdrawing from commitments abroad, but will lead to a substantial American response to punish the perpetrators, to defend our friends and interests abroad. If public opinion polls do not reinforce deterrence, one should remind all foreign governments and others that such polls are misleading. If everyone knows that an attack on the American homeland will not cause Americans to flinch, but will lead to a very punishing response, these attacks on the American homeland may well again be deterred, may never happen.

     The December, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor might be cited as the last foreign attack on the "American homeland", although Hawaii was not yet a state at the time, and (as noted) some American public opinion polls even showed a hesitation about defending Hawaii. To be sure, the Japanese attack had to be rated as relatively purely counterforce, as the American fleet was the target, and no bombs were to be wasted on Honolulu.

     Yet the Japanese logic in initiating war with the United States was very parallel to what would be in the mind of someone attacking the American homeland in the coming century, namely a bet that Americans could be tired out by the prospect of pain and suffering, and dissuaded from opposing Japanese interests.

     The Japanese government planned on seizing a secure enough position in a quick attack in 1941 and 1942, so that the American people and their government would regard the burden of reversing this as too great a price to be paid, with Japan then being free to have its way in China.[18] Someone delivering weapons of mass destruction to an American city in some future crisis might be very similarly intent on impressing the United States that the price of getting in the aggressor's way in some corner of the world would be too high.

     The Pearl Harbor attack is indeed analogous to our problem of how to deter an attack on the American homeland. To repeat, it offers a cautionary lesson to those who think that Americans will not retaliate. If the Japanese had understood the Americans better, they would have been deterred from attacking Pearl Harbor, and they would have been deterred from continuing their attack on China, or compelled to withdraw from China.
Bad News: The Future Unlike the Past?

     Yet a pessimistic counter-prediction could be advanced that the future threat to the homeland we are discussing here is significantly different, enough so to make Americans much more likely to shrink back than to respond, and hence to make this come out much more an example of appeasement and surrender, rather than successful deterrence.

    To begin with the most obvious point, the destruction inflicted on the American homeland would be much greater than anything experienced in 1916, or anything anticipated before 1945, with the prospect that the nuclear, chemical or biological attack that had just been inflicted on an American city would be inflicted again, if the United States did not make the concession demanded, did not withdraw its forces from some area.

     It may be dangerous to underestimate American resolve, as our response to the Pearl Harbor attack showed. Yet it would be unrealistic to impute unlimited resolve to the same Americans, assuming that they were ready "to pay any price..." as John F. Kennedy's inaugural speech had phrased it; the reaction to the casualties imposed in Vietnam, or indeed in Somalia, suggests something different.

     And to return to the first lesson we noted, Americans will be frustrated by uncertainties as to who launched these attacks, uncertainties about whom to hit back against.

Policies for Toughening Up

     As to what can be done to stiffen the prospect of resolve (the prospect that such retaliation would indeed be inflicted when the adversary had been identified, that Americans would not instead flinch in the face of further attacks), the policy suggestions might again be obvious, but with the feasibility also again being under some doubt.

     If there are some elementary population-defense precautions that can be taken to reduce the death and suffering after an WMD attack, these grow in priority in face of the new threats that are looming; this is because of our elementary humane concern for protecting our innocent citizens, and because such precautions will increase the prospect that deterrence would work, the prospect that Americans would hit back at the perpetrator of such an attack, rather than give in to his demands.

     The homeland attacks we have to fear will be part of a contest of endurance, a game of "chicken", where the other side is guessing that he can win by imposing pain on Americans. As with the contests of guerrilla war or conventional war in the past, or the more minor terrorist attacks we have experienced to date, Americans stand a better chance of winning such contests, and indeed of keeping such contests from even beginnig in the first place, if they show signs of having protected themselves somewhat, of having reduced the suffering that we would undergo in the process.

American Resolve in the Future?

     Rather than retreating and conceding all the political issues at stake after a major counter value attack on the United States homeland (or after such an attack on an overseas base of the United States), it is also still very possible that Americans would thereafter feel inclined to go to the other extreme, to impose a maximum of punishment on the perpetrator of the original attack.

     Such punishment could come, of course, in a simple matching of attacks on homeland, once the guilty party is identified, as the United States is still a long way from divesting itself of its nuclear warheads or the means of delivering them.

     Alternatively, and morally more appropriate where the decision to attack the American homeland was not made by the people of another country, but by some leader who may never have been freely elected, the American response might indeed be to go to the maximum effort of deposing and arresting those leaders, just as we went to such an effort against the Japanese and German leaders in World War II.

    The United States and its allies did not go to Baghdad to arrest and punish Saddam Hussein, and no Iraqi leaders were put on trial for war crimes. But it is a reasonable guess that this would indeed have been the response if Iraq had launched a chemical or biological attack on an American city, or indeed had launched any such WMD attack anywhere in the world, even in the immediate combat zone.[19] The prospect of such a total pursuit of unconditional surrender might still be one of the most effective ways of establishing a deterrence barrier to attacks on the American homeland.

     The only major problem with this kind of deterrent is that we might need to couple this threat to other possible actions by a rogue-state adversary. Is an attack on an American city the only transgression for which Saddam Hussein might have to be punished by his arrest and the total deposition of his regime? Most probably not, for the same might have to be the response if Iraqi forces launched another major conventional invasion of Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, or if Saddam broke chemical or biological weapons out for use against a neighbor, or perhaps if he merely insisted on acquiring nuclear weapons. If the major punishment is to be applied for such lesser offenses, however, what is the deterrent being held in reserve, to keep Saddam Hussein or any similar political actor from attacking the American homeland?

Some General Conclusions

     Deterrence has been successful against the prospect of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union and by the other states possessing such weapons. It has been a "success" in that the attacks have not occurred, and also in that Americans have not had to brood about the prospect of such attacks. Looking at the longer history of the deterrence concept, and the longer history of threats to the American homeland, our question has been how such a deterrence success can be achieved now that the threats have changed.

     The three "lessons" noted above all address the logical prerequisites of deterrence. One has to enable oneself to identify the guilty party, the perpetrator of the attack. One has to toughen up one's population so that we are all ready to persist in a contest of wills. And one has to make one's own resolve clear, lest the potential attacker under-rate American willingness to retaliate.

     The logic of deterrence is clear enough to make these lessons relatively easy to identify. Implementing these lessons, however, may be much more difficult.

[birther truther tenther]

Hey peasant, if you break a federal law, you will spend 5-20 years in a Supermax-type prison where you are locked in a concrete cage for 23 hours a day.  If you are a treasonous piece of scum, federal laws are just "formalities" that get in the way of the mission to bring down America for the banksters.


FULL TEXT
The Myth of Posse Comitatus

MAJ Craig T. Trebilcock, USAR
October 2000




MAJ Craig Trebilcock is a member of the Judge Advocate General's (JAG) Corps in the U.S. Army Reserve. MAJ Trebilcock is assigned as an operational law attorney with the 153d LSO in Norristown, PA. His area of specialization includes the laws applicable to U.S. forces engaged in operations in both the U.S. and abroad. MAJ Trebilcock is a graduate of the University of Michigan (A.B. with high honors, 1982) and the University of Michigan Law School (J.D. 1985). His military education includes the JAG Basic Course (1988), JAG Advanced Course (1992), U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (1997), and the U.S. Navy War College International Relations Seminar (2000). MAJ Trebilcock is a civilian immigration attorney with the firm of Barley, Snyder, Senft, & Cohen in York, PA.

The Posse Comitatus Act has been traditionally viewed as a major barrier to the use of U.S. military forces in planning for homeland defense.[1] In fact, many in uniform believe the Act precludes the use of U.S. military assets in domestic security operations in any but the most extraordinary situations. As is often the case, reality bears little resemblance to the myth for homeland defense planners. Through a gradual erosion of the Act's prohibitions over the past twenty years, Posse Comitatus today is more of a procedural formality than an actual impediment to the use of U.S. military forces in homeland defense.

HISTORY

     The original 1878 Posse Comitatus Act was indeed passed with the intent of removing the Army from domestic law enforcement. "Posse Comitatus" means the "power of the county," reflecting the inherent power of the old west county sheriff to call upon a posse of able-bodied men to supplement law enforcement assets and thereby maintain the peace. Following the Civil War the Army had been used extensively throughout the South to maintain civil order, to enforce the policies of the reconstruction era, and to ensure that any lingering sentiments of rebellion were crushed. However, in reaching those goals the Army necessarily became involved in traditional police roles and in enforcing politically volatile reconstruction era policies. The stationing of federal troops at political events and polling places under the justification of maintaining domestic order became of increasing concern to Congress, which felt that the Army was becoming politicized and straying from its original national defense mission. The Posse Comitatus Act was passed to remove the Army from civilian law enforcement and to return it to its role of defending the borders of the United States.

APPLICATION OF THE ACT

     In order to understand the extent to which the Act has relevance today, it is important to understand to whom the Act applies and under what circumstances. The statutory language of the Act does not apply to all U.S. military forces.[2] While the Act has applicability to the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines, including their reserve components, it does not have any applicability to the Coast Guard, nor to the huge military manpower resources of the National Guard.[3] The National Guard, when it is operating in its state status pursuant to Title 13 of the U.S. Code is not subject to the prohibitions on civilian law enforcement. (Federal military forces operate pursuant to Title 10 of the U.S. Code.) In fact one of the express missions of the Guard is to preserve the laws of the state during times of emergency when regular law enforcement assets prove inadequate. It is only when federalized pursuant to an exercise of Presidential authority that the Guard becomes subject to the limitations of the Posse Comitatus Act.

     The intent of the Act is to prevent the military forces of the U.S. from becoming a national police force or guardia civil. Accordingly, the act prohibits the use of the military to "execute the laws".[4],[5] Execution of the laws is perceived to be a civilian police function, which includes the arrest and detention of criminal suspects, search and seizure activities, restriction of civilian movement through the use of blockades or checkpoints, gathering evidence for use in court, and the use of undercover personnel in civilian drug enforcement activities.[6]

     The federal courts have had several opportunities to define what behavior by military personnel in support of civilian law enforcement is permissible under the Act. The test applied by the courts has been to determine whether the role of military personnel in the law enforcement operation was "passive" or "active". Active participation in civilian law enforcement, such as making arrests, is deemed to be a violation of the Act, while taking a "passive" supporting role is not.[7] Passive support has often taken the form of logistical support to civilian police agencies. Recognizing that the military possesses unique equipment and uniquely trained personnel, the courts have held that providing supplies, equipment, training, facilities, and certain types of intelligence information does not violate the Act. Military personnel may also be involved in the planning of law enforcement operations, as long as the actual arrest of suspects and seizure of evidence is carried out by civilian law enforcement personnel.[8]

     The Posse Comitatus act was passed in the Nineteenth Century, when the distinction between criminal law enforcement and defense of the national borders was clearer. Today, with the advent of technology that permits weapons of mass destruction to be transported by a single person, the line between police functions and national security concerns has blurred.[9] As a matter of policy Western nations have labeled terrorists as "criminals" to be prosecuted under domestic criminal laws. Consistent with this, the Department of Justice has been charged as the lead U.S. agency for combating terrorism. However, all terrorist acts are not planned and executed by non-state actors. Terrorism refers to illegal attacks on civilians and other non-military targets by either state or non-state actors. This new type of threat requires a reassessment of traditional military roles and missions along with an examination of the relevance and benefit of the Posse Comitatus Act.

EROSION OF THE ACT

     While the Act appears to prohibit active participation in law enforcement by the military, the reality in application has become quite different. The Act is a statutory creation, not a constitutional prohibition. Accordingly, the Act can and has been repeatedly circumvented by subsequent legislation. Since 1980, the Congress and President have significantly eroded the prohibitions of the Act in order to meet a variety of law enforcement challenges.

     One of the most controversial uses of the military during the past twenty years has been to involve the Navy and Air Force in the "war on drugs." Recognizing the inability of civilian law enforcement agencies to interdict the smuggling of drugs into the US by air and sea, the Reagan Administration directed the Department of Defense to utilize naval and air assets to reach out beyond the borders of the US to preempt drug smuggling. This use of the military in anti-drug law enforcement was approved by Congress in 10 USC sections 371-381. This same legislation permitted the use of military forces in other traditional civilian areas - immigration control and tariff enforcement.

     The use of the military in opposing drug smuggling and illegal immigration was a significant step away from the Act's central tenet that there was no proper role for the military in the direct enforcement of the laws. The legislative history explains that this new policy is consistent with the Posse Comitatus Act, by explaining that this involvement still amounted to an indirect and logistical support of civilian law enforcement and not a direct enforcement role.[10]

     The weakness of the passive versus direct involvement analysis in law enforcement was most graphically demonstrated in the tragic 1999 shooting of a shepherd by marines who had been assigned a smuggling/illegal immigration border interdiction mission in the remote Southwest. An investigation revealed that for some inexplicable reason the 16 year old shepherd fired his weapon in the direction of the marines. Return fire then killed the boy. This tragedy demonstrates that when armed troops are placed in a position where they are being asked to counter potential criminal activity that it is a mere semantic exercise to argue that the military is being used in a passive support role. The fact that armed military troops were being placed into a position with the mere possibility that they would have to use force to subdue civilian criminal activity reflects a significant policy shift by the executive branch away from the Posse Comitatus doctrine.

     Congress has also approved the use of the military in civilian law enforcement matters through the Civil Disturbance Statutes. 10 U.S.C. sections 331-334. These provisions permit the President to use military personnel to enforce civilian laws where the State has requested assistance or is unable to protect civil rights and property. In case of civil disturbance the President must first give an order for the offenders to disperse. If the order is not obeyed, the President may then authorize military forces to make arrests and restore order. The scope of the Civil Disturbance Statutes is sufficiently broad to encompass civil disturbance resulting from terrorist or other criminal activity. It was these provisions that were relied upon to restore order using active duty Army personnel following the Los Angeles "race riots" of the early 1990s.

     Federal military personnel may also be used pursuant to the Stafford Act, 42 USC section 5121 in times of natural disaster upon request from a state Governor. In such an instance the Stafford Act permits the President to declare a major disaster and send in military forces on an emergency basis for up to ten days to preserve life and property. While the Stafford Act authority is still subject to the active versus passive analysis noted above, it still represents a significant exception to the Posse Comitatus Act's underlying principle that the military is not a domestic police force auxiliary.

     An infrequently cited constitutional power of the President provides an even broader basis for the President to use military forces in the context of homeland defense. This is the President's inherent right and duty to preserve federal functions. In the past this has been recognized to authorize the President to preserve the freedom of navigable waterways and to put down armed insurrection. However, with the expansion of federal government authority during this century into many areas formerly reserved to the States (transportation, commerce, education, civil rights) there is likewise an argument that the President's power to preserve these "federal" functions has expanded as well. The use of federal troops in the South during the 1960s to preserve access to educational institutions for blacks was an exercise of this constitutional Presidential authority.

     In the past five years the erosion of the Posse Comitatus Act has continued with the increasingly common use of military forces as security for essentially civilian events. During the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta over ten thousand US troops were deployed under the partial rationale that they were present to deter terrorism. The use of active duty military forces in a traditional police security role did not raise any serious questions under the Act, even though these troops would clearly have been in the middle of a massive law enforcement emergency had a large-scale terrorist incident occurred. The only questions of propriety arose when many of these troops were then employed as bus drivers or to maintain playing fields. This led to a momentary, but passing expression of displeasure from Congress.[11]

HOMELAND DEFENSE

     The Posse Comitatus act was passed in an era when the threat to national security came primarily from the standing armies and navies of foreign powers. Today the equation for national defense and security has changed significantly. With the fall of the Soviet Union our attention has been diverted from the threat of aggression by massed armies crossing the plains of Europe to the security of our own soil against biological/chemical terrorism. Rather than focusing upon the threat of massed Russian ICBMs as our most imminent threat, we are increasingly more aware of the destructive potential of new forms of asymmetric warfare. For instance, the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment states that 100 kilograms of dry powdered anthrax released under ideal meteorological conditions could kill up to three million people in a city the size of Washington DC.[12] The chemical warfare attacks carried out by Japanese terrorists in the subways of Tokyo during the 90s heightened our sense of vulnerability. The Oklahoma City bombing and the unsuccessful attempt to topple the World Trade Center have our domestic security planners looking inward for threats against the soil of the United States from small, but technologically advanced threats of highly motivated terrorists. What legal bar does the Posse Comitatus Act present today to using the military to prevent and/or respond to a biological or chemical attack upon the soil of the United States? In view of the erosion of the Posse Comitatus Act in the past twenty years, the answer is "not much."

     The erosion of the Posse Comitatus Act through Congressional legislation and Executive policy has left a hollow shell in place of a law that formerly was a real limitation on the military's role in civilian law enforcement and security issues. The plethora of constitutional and statutory exceptions to the Act provides the executive branch with a menu of options under which they can justify the use of military forces to combat domestic terrorism. Whether an act of terrorism is classified as a civil disturbance under 10 USC 331-334 or whether the President relies upon his constitutional power to preserve federal functions, it is difficult to think of a domestic terrorism scenario of sizable scale under which the use of the military could not be lawfully justified in view of the Act's erosion. The Act is no longer a realistic bar to direct military involvement in counter-terrorism planning and operations. It is low legal hurdle that can be easily cleared through invocation of the appropriate legal justification, either before or after the fact.[13]

CONCLUSION

     Is the Posse Comitatus Act totally without meaning today? No, it remains a deterrent to prevent the unauthorized deployment of troops at the local level in response to what is purely a civilian law enforcement matter. Although no person has ever been successfully prosecuted under the Act, it is available in criminal or administrative proceedings to punish a lower level commander who utilizes military forces to pursue a common felon or to conduct sobriety checkpoints off of a federal military post. Officers have had their careers abruptly brought to a close by misusing federal military assets to support a purely civilian criminal matter.

     But does the Act present a major barrier at the National Command Authority level to use military forces in the battle against terrorism? The numerous exceptions and policy shifts carried out over the past twenty years strongly indicate it does not. Could anyone seriously suggest that it is appropriate to use the military to interdict drugs and illegal aliens, but preclude the military from countering terrorist threats employing weapons of mass destruction? For two decades the military has been increasingly used as an auxiliary to civilian law enforcement when the capabilities of the police have been exceeded. Under both the statutory and Constitutional exceptions that have permitted the use of the military in law enforcement since 1980, the President has ample authority to employ the military in homeland defense against the threat of WMD in terrorist hands.

[birther truther tenther]

ASK THE EXPERTS:

Q.    What is the actual, U.S. Government definition of "homeland defense"?
(Lt Col USAFRet Louis Walter ; TRW Systems )
02 May 01

A.    Homeland Security Analyst Mark DeMier; ANSER

There is no single, coordinated US Government definition of "homeland defense." It does not even appear in the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (Joint Publication 1-02). However, consensus does seem to be emerging on the term "Homeland Security." The Quadrennial Defense Review team, for instance, defines this as the prevention, deterrence, and preemption of, and defense against, aggression targeted at U.S. territory, sovereignty, population, and infrastructure as well as the management of the consequences of such aggression and other domestic emergencies. Homeland Defense -- the prevention, preemption, and deterrence of, and defense against, direct attacks aimed at U.S. territory, population, and infrastructure -- and Civil Support -- DoD support to civilian authorities for natural and manmade domestic emergencies, civil disturbances, and designated law enforcement efforts -- are then defined as subset of Homeland Security.

Similarly, the United States Commission on National Security/21st Century (Hart-Rudman Commission) has called for the creation of a National Homeland Security Agency prompting the introduction of at least two bills in the House of Representatives -- HR 1158 (Thornbery, TX) and HR 1158 (Skelton, MO) -- which, if enacted, would likely codify the term Homeland Security.




Q.     How did "homeland" become part of the name that de
(Why "homeland"? Mark Bower ; Air National Guard )
30 Mar 01

A.    Homeland Security Analyst John Wohlfarth; ANSER

While the concept of “defending the homeland” is an idea dating back through the better part of human history, the term “homeland defense” only recently entered the lexicon of public discourse. To the best of our knowledge, the first American use of the term homeland defense was made in a report submitted by the National Defense Panel in 1997. The report, titled Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century, argued that this new focus on guarding the homeland was essential, due to the changing nature of threats against the American people. They warn,

“…The proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and their delivery means will pose a serious threat to our homeland and our forces overseas. Information systems, the vital arteries of the modern political, economic, and social infrastructures, will undoubtedly be targets as well.” (Transforming Defense: Executive Summary)

This document was followed by a series of additional studies, including analyses from the Hart-Rudman Commission, the Gilmore Commission and papers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Additionally, some organizations and individuals like Congressman Ike Skelton have adopted variations of the phrase, like “Homeland Security”.

But regardless of the permutations, the idea of the “homeland” has in a brief few years, become almost universally accepted by policy makers and first responders as the most direct method for discussing physical dangers to the American people and US infrastructure.

[birther truther tenther]

Dr. Ruth David was one of the traitors to the Constitution that Anti_Illuminati exposed:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22ruth+david%22+site%3Aforum.prisonplanet.com



FULL TEXT:

Homeland Defense:
Assumptions First, Strategy Second
Col. Randall J. Larsen, USAF-Ret. and Dr. Ruth A. David
October 2000

Previously published in the Fall 2000 edition of Strategic Review

Randy Larsen is the Director of Homeland Defense at ANSER, a not-for-profit public service research institute. He also serves as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Homeland Defense. He has written and lectured on the subjects of biological warfare, asymmetric warfare, and homeland defense while serving as the Chairman, Department of Military Strategy and Operations, at the National War College. He has an M.A. in National Security Studies from the Naval Post Graduate School and served as research fellow at the Mathew B. Ridgeway Center for International Security at the University of Pittsburgh.


Dr. Ruth David is the President and CEO of ANSER. From 1995 to 1998 she was the Deputy Director for Science and Technology at the Central Intelligence Agency. She had earlier spent 20 years at Sandia National Laboratories. She serves on the Defense Science Board, the National Security Agency Advisory Board, the National Research Council Naval Studies Board, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Technical Advisory Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission Advisory Committee on Technology, and the DOE Nonproliferation and National Security Advisory Committee. She has a Ph.D. from Stanford University in electrical engineering

 Each new administration brings with it a set of assumptions on national security issues. These assumptions provide the framework for strategy, policy, and resource allocation. It is not clear today what assumptions a new administration will bring to Washington regarding homeland defense. With the possible exception of national missile defense, neither major party has provided details on what may become the most important national security issue America will face in the coming decade.

     What is homeland defense? The North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) states, "Homeland defense is the core of military service." [1] Yet the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms does not define or even mention the term.[2] Ask foreign military officers what the mission of their nations' armed forces is and most will say, "To defend our homeland." That is not the answer one would hear from most American military officers.

     Homeland defense is something NORAD has been doing since its inception in 1958. But for most other military units and other federal, state and local government organizations, homeland defense is a new concept. That is precisely why homeland defense is arguably the most misunderstood term in the national security vernacular. In fact, there is a raging debate among and within federal agencies whether this mission should be called "homeland defense," "domestic security," or "civil support."

     The new administration can quickly correct this problem. It should state that homeland defense is neither an isolationist, "fortress America" concept, nor a mission primarily focused on managing the consequences of a catastrophic attack on U.S. soil. In the 21st century, the term "homeland defense" is nearly synonymous with how we used the term "national security" in the latter half of the 20th century. There are just two primary differences.

    * Nation-states, large and small, and some non-state actors have the capability to bring a new form of warfare to the American homeland.
    * New types of weapons, primarily cyber and biological, are immune to our superpower status and traditional defenses.

     The homeland defense mission in the 21st century should not be confused with counter-terrorism in the 20th century. This is not about someone driving a truck bomb into the parking garage of a large government building. That would be a tragedy, but homeland defense is about serious threats to national security. This new type of threat, unfortunately, will prove to be the most significant change in national security since the invention of the hydrogen bomb.

     Since the report of the National Defense Panel in 1997 first mentioned the emerging threat to the American homeland, numerous workshops, conferences, and commissions, plus several GAO reports, have identified the requirement to develop a strategy for homeland defense.[3] This should be a high priority for the next President. However, America is not ready to develop this strategy, because there is no consensus on the key assumptions that would underpin any such strategy. Wide disagreements exist on the nature of the threat, the probability of attack, the roles and missions of the federal, state, and local governments, and the role of the private sector. This diversity of opinions and assumptions has added value to the discussion.

     Homeland defense is a new concept for America, requiring new ideas, new partnerships, and vigorous debate. But the true value of these discussions will not be realized until the new administration moves from the academic phase ("we need another commission") to the action phase (statement of assumptions, strategy and policy development, and resource allocation). The first step in the action phase should be a Presidential White Paper on homeland defense. It should contain five key assumptions:

   1.  The threat of asymmetric attacks on the American homeland, either by nation-states or terrorist organizations, is real and will increase during the next decade.
   2. The federal government will play the leading role in deterrence, prevention, preemption, attribution, and retaliation.
   3. State assets (which include the National Guard) and local governments will play the lead role in first response and consequence management.
   4. The private sector will play a critical operational role, particularly in defending against and responding to cyber and biological attacks.
   5. An integrated warning/information/coordination system is required to ensure effective use of resources to mitigate effects during and after large-scale attacks or campaigns.

Whether a new administration agrees with the foregoing assumptions and definitions is far less important than the act of clearly communicating its own assumptions. The homeland defense mission needs a leader, and only one person can provide that leadership. He will take office on January 20, 2001.

The Five Assumptions

     1. The threat of asymmetric attacks on the American homeland, either by nation-states or terrorist organizations, is real and will increase during the next decade. Some disparagingly use the terms "alarmists," "doomsayers," and "worst-case scenarios" to downplay the threat. Yet respected national security leaders such as Secretary of Defense William Cohen, General Colin Powell, and former Senator Sam Nunn tell us otherwise.[4] The fact is that no one can tell us when an event will happen, but a growing field of national security experts and analysts agree that the possibility of occurrence is increasing. Instead of focusing on predictions that we all know are fallacious, a more reliable model is used by Dr. Lani Kass at the National War College:

Vulnerabilities x Intentions x Capabilities = Threat.[5]

     Like any nation, America is vulnerable to nuclear weapons, but due to our rapidly increasing dependence on information technology, America is even more vulnerable than most countries to cyber attacks. We all witnessed what two junior college dropouts can do when they launched the "I Love You" virus on the Internet. In April 1998 a few dozen U.S. government employees assumed the role of the enemy in an exercise called "Eligible Receiver." They quickly demonstrated their ability to shut down America's power grid and seriously disrupt U.S. military forces in the Pacific.[6] Imagine what damage a 21st century adversary could inflict with a team of computer engineers trained in America's best universities.

 

     Biological warfare is another area of increasing concern. Our vulnerability to a large-scale biological event was demonstrated during the winter of 1918-19 when 600,000 Americans died of influenza (naturally occurring) and once again during the recent "Topoff" exercise, in which a simulated attack with pneumonic plague overwhelmed medical facilities in central Colorado.[7] Our friendly neighbors to the north and south, the two oceans that have protected our eastern and western flanks, and our strong military no longer provide protection from threats that modern technologies make possible. America's vulnerability to asymmetric attacks is real and significant.

     While the technology has changed, motivations and intentions have not. More than 2,500 years ago Plato said, "Only the dead have seen the end of war." Unfortunately, these words are just as true today. During the coming decades, nation-states and non-governmental actors will perceive "justifiable reason" to challenge America's leadership. Their intentions may be Clausewitzian in nature - attack our center of gravity (the once impregnable homeland) to obtain political goals - or they may seek only to punish us and reveal our Achilles' heel. Some say no one would dare attack our homeland for fear of massive retaliation. But many threats, especially biological and cyber attacks, can unfold anonymously.

     In this equation, capabilities represent the critical factor that is changing most. The growing cyber threat is obvious. Less obvious is the growing biological threat. While most agree that the chances of a small terrorist group developing a bioweapon capable of killing millions is remote, the fact remains that certain scenarios do pose a serious threat to the American homeland.

 

     One of the problems with the Gilmore Commission's examination of the threat from weapons of mass destruction was that it focused exclusively on current terrorist activities and excluded nation-states as well as future capabilities. Furthermore, it used Aum Shinrikyo as an example of a well-funded terrorist organization that failed to successfully weaponize anthrax, and concluded that BW was not a serious threat.[8] This was the wrong "lesson learned." The cult members charged with developing a biological warfare program were physicians and chemists. There were no microbiologists working on Aum Shinrikyo's biological warfare program. That is why they failed. The fact remains, most nation-states and many well-funded terrorist organizations have the capability to produce sophisticated biological weapons. Future developments, including genetically engineered biological warfare agents, will likely be a reality within the next decade.[9]

     Others, such as Jonathon Tucker, a highly respected scholar from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, "proved" that BW would not likely be a threat because so many attempts have failed in the past. However, he admits that if a terrorist organization obtained high-quality BW agents from the Soviet Union's program (which produced such agents by the tons), it would pose a serious threat.[10] Supposedly, these massive stockpiles have been destroyed. But "seed stock" of these agents (plague, smallpox, Marburg, anthrax, and many others) remain. So do the scientists who produced these weapons. Most are unpaid and underemployed, a fact well known by our adversaries.[11]

     The question is not whether the vast majority of terrorist groups are capable of launching a large-scale BW attack on the American homeland. They are not. The question is: Is it reasonable to assume that no terrorist organization or hostile nation-state could develop the capability to launch a successful BW attack on the American homeland? (How can one assume that, when the U.S., USSR, UK and several other nations built highly sophisticated biological weapons programs with 1960s technology?) The paramount assumption that must come from the new administration is that the current, and more important, the near-term vulnerability x intentions x capability equation produces a serious threat to the American homeland.

     2. The federal government will play the leading role in deterrence, prevention, preemption, attribution and retaliation. One of the most hotly debated issues of homeland defense is, "Who is in charge?" The answer is both simple and complex. According to the U.S. Constitution,[12] the President is in charge of defending the homeland; however, outside the Oval Office the responsibility, authority and accountability become obscure and include federal officials, governors, mayors, fire chiefs, and many others. The Gilmore, Hart-Rudman, and Bremer Commissions have examined these issues, but none has resolved them. A Presidential White Paper should assign responsibility based on mission areas. The federal government should have the lead for deterrence, prevention, preemption, attribution, and retaliation. Of the five assumptions in this paper, this will be the least controversial, with the possible exception of attribution.

     Attribution is a relatively new concept in national security. For the past 200 years, weapons have primarily used blast, heat, and fragmentation. As John Train noted in the Summer issue of Strategic Review, bullets, bombs, and missiles generally come with return addresses. Cyber and biological attacks may not. Swift, accurate forensics is critical to proper response - retaliation - and that may play an important role in preventing or deterring further attacks. To ensure swift, accurate forensics, the federal government will need total cooperation from local officials. America cannot afford a repeat of the confusion that occurred following President Kennedy's assassination about who was in charge of the investigation - the Dallas police, the sheriff's department, the FBI, or the Secret Service.[13] The factors that caused confusion between these law enforcement agencies have been corrected by Congressional legislation. In the case of homeland defense, we must not wait for another confused and uncoordinated response before correcting the problem. America must avoid what former Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre refers to as "the fault lines" between federal, state, and local areas of responsibility.

     3. State assets (which include the National Guard) and local governments will play the lead role in first response and consequence management. With the exception of unique skills, such as the Department of Energy's ability to handle nuclear weapons and DoD's technical support following a chemical attack, the vast majority of first response assets will come from state and local governments - particularly following the mass disruption and consequences of a major biological or cyber attack. The federal government can play an important role in providing standards for equipment and training; however, these first responders (fire fighters, police officers and Hazardous Material Teams) will clearly be under the command and control of state and local officials.

     These resources serve the nation best when they can be loaned to other jurisdictions as needed. The National Guard, commanded by state governors (except when federalized), is a superb example of how national standards can be of great benefit to state assets. Moreover, National Guard units often respond in other states following natural disasters. Their national standardization greatly facilitates effective integration with units in other states - a capability needed when responding to weapons that self-replicate like computer and biological viruses.

 

     4. The private sector will play a critical operational role, particularly in defending against and responding to cyber and biological attacks. The need for a new partnership among the federal, state, and local governments for homeland defense is a new concept that some will have difficulty accepting. Even more difficult, perhaps, will be the necessity to include the private sector in this partnership. But it must be included, because most of this nation's critical information infrastructure is privately owned.

 

     The most difficult challenge in forming this new partnership will not be to get the public sector to cooperate; rather, the problem will be the private sector. Today, corporations, large and small, are less-than-enthusiastic partners. Many corporations admit privately they are fearful of reporting computer crimes and attacks because investigations could:

    * disrupt their business (when the FBI confiscates their storage devices to complete its investigation),
    * provide self-incriminating information to law enforcement officials, and/or
    * compromise highly sensitive proprietary information.[14]

     A critical element in this new partnership will be to require that cyber crimes and cyber attacks be investigated by a new type of organization, or under laws that provide immunity and ironclad security guarantees. The new organization would more closely resemble NASA or a not-for-profit corporation than it would the Department of Justice. Several information-sharing and policy-coordination partnerships exist between the private and public sectors, but the "law enforcement" problems must be resolved.[15] There should be no hesitation to report computer crimes and computer attacks to the appropriate authorities. Rapid reporting - and response - is required to protect America's critical information infrastructures.

     Another important element in the private-public partnership will be the role the private sector plays in responding to a biological attack, either man-made or naturally occurring. The initial indication of such an attack will likely come from doctors, nurses and medical technicians. Today there exists a mature partnership between the public and private health communities.[16] What is lacking is a real-time epidemiological reporting system that will allow rapid analysis and coordination on a national level. This shortfall was apparent in the "Topoff" exercise.

     5. An integrated warning/information/coordination system is required to ensure effective use of resources to mitigate effects during and after large-scale attacks or campaigns. When Ray Downey, Chief of the Fire Department of New York City Special Operations Unit, was asked what system was available to provide information from one municipality to another about the details of an asymmetric campaign on the American homeland, his answer was "None.”[17] In other words, if attacks were underway in cities on the West Coast, no system presently exists to pass critical information to first responders in New York or other cities.

     Nowhere was this more obvious than during a February 2000 tabletop exercise by the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, and their senior staffs. This exercise began with the explosion of a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon in downtown Cincinnati. The lack of an integrated information and coordination system was obvious throughout the exercise.[18] This failure was also witnessed during the "Topoff" exercise in May 2000, in which simultaneous chemical, biological, and radiological attacks occurred in three widely separated metropolitan areas.

    One of the most important roles the federal government should play in preparing America's capability to respond to a serious attack on our homeland is to build an integrated warning/information/coordination system. It would provide the means to monitor activities from a national level. Is the massive disruption of power on the West Coast part of a coordinated attack, or is the simultaneous outbreak of West Nile Virus on the East Coast just a coincidence? How about an oil pipeline break just outside of Houston coupled with air traffic control disruptions in Chicago? Today, the capability for rapid, integrated analysis of such events does not exist.

 

     This system would also provide first responders across the country with "controlled or classified" information during crises, and it would be a great management and coordination tool for governors and FEMA to use, especially in responding to crises that involve bordering states.


     The $40 million federal coordination center built for Y2K has, unfortunately, been dismantled. It would have served as an excellent prototype for a nationwide homeland defense warning/information/coordination system. It should be located in the nation's capital, but also have regional centers for redundancy (backup) and to provide more liaison with state emergency management centers.

 
Recommendations

     During its first 100 days in office, the newly elected administration should issue a White Paper on homeland defense. It should include the aforementioned assumptions and perhaps a few others. One important issue not mentioned above is the problem with reliable warning from the intelligence community. Counting Soviet missile silos, ships and armored divisions was a much easier challenge than it will be to discover biological weapons laboratories and cyber warfare capabilities. The prospect of a bolt out of the blue attack will increase in the 21st century, both against our deployed military forces and on our homeland.

     It is therefore not prudent to assume the threat away just because it has not happened yet. The Vulnerabilities x Intentions x Capabilities = Threat equation provides the requirement for action by the new President. America will face new threats in the 21st century. They may not be imminent, but they are real, and the threat of attack on the American homeland will increase with time. The time to prepare is now, not the day after. The President is the only individual with the clout needed to lead the federal effort and to coordinate and cajole support from state, local, and private organizations. He is the only leader capable of bringing about the structural and organizational changes required. The preparation does not require new big-ticket items, but it does require new thinking, new concepts, and strong leadership.

     As a young nation we defended our homeland with coastal batteries. During the Cold War we defended our homeland from aerial attack with NORAD. Which frontier and what means will protect the American homeland in the 21st century? America expects the next President to provide the answers.

[birther truther tenther]

Retrieved from:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010711092117/www.csis.org/hill/ts010327cilluffo.htm




Combating Terrorism: In Search of a National Strategy


Testimony of Frank J. Cilluffo
Chairman, Committee on Combating Chemical,
Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Terrorism,

Homeland Defense Initiative
Center for Strategic & International Studies

Before the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations U.S. House Committee on Government Reform

27 March 2001

Chairman Shays, distinguished members of the committee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today on a matter of critical importance to our nation's security, namely: the formulation of a national strategy to combat terrorism. In holding hearings on this issue, the Subcommittee - and indeed Congress as a whole - should be commended for its foresight in seizing the occasion to identify gaps and shortfalls in our current policies, practices, procedures, and programs. It is only with such an analysis in mind - that is, one that considers and appreciates what has worked, what has not worked, and what has not been adequately addressed - that we can go on to the next step of crafting an effective national counterterrorism strategy.

In considering how best to proceed on this front, we should not be afraid to wipe the slate clean and review the matter afresh. My contribution to this hearing will focus specifically on terrorism using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons - though, by and large, my comments will also be relevant to counterterrorism more generally.

When critically evaluating our current state of preparedness, it is important to adopt a balanced viewpoint - that is, a perspective which appreciates both how we far we have come already and just how far we have yet to go. In my view, it seems fair to conclude two things in this regard. First, federal, state, and local governments have made impressive strides to prepare for terrorism - specifically, terrorism using CBRN weapons. Second, and more unfortunately, the whole remains less than the sum of the parts. Let me explain.

The United States is now at a crossroads. While credit must be given where it is due, the time has come for cold-eyed assessment and evaluation, and the recognition that we do not presently have - but are in genuine need of - a comprehensive strategy for countering the threat of terrorism and the larger challenges of homeland defense. As things presently stand, however, there is neither assurance (via benchmarking) that we have a clear capital investment strategy nor a clearly defined end-state, let alone a clear sense of the requisite objectives to reach this goal. More generally, and even worse, without a national plan, we leave ourselves at risk.

Although there is no way to predict with certainty the threat to the homeland in the short-term or the long-term, it is widely accepted that unmatched U.S. power (cultural, diplomatic, economic and military) is likely to cause America's adversaries to favor "asymmetric" attacks against undefended targets over direct conventional military confrontations. Indeed, in a recent address to our NATO allies, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld specifically raised the issue of the proliferation of unconventional weapons and technologies to both state and non-state actors, and also flagged our concomitant vulnerability.

Against this background, military superiority in itself is no longer sufficient to ensure our safety. Instead, we need to go further by broadening our concept of national security planning so as to encompass CBRN counterterrorism.

After several years of activity in this arena, progress has been uneven. On the one hand, the past handful of years can be summed up in the phrase "long on nouns but short on verbs." On the other hand, there is still a substantial amount of good news that deserves to be told and built upon.

But pockets of real success, however significant, are not enough. We need to achieve progress across the board and in synergistic fashion, so that positive developments in one area feed further success - exponential, not just incremental success - in another.

Make no mistake, though. The dimensions of the challenge are enormous. The threat of CBRN terrorism by states and non-state actors presents unprecedented planning challenges to American government and society. Notably, no single federal agency owns this strategic mission completely. For the moment, however, many agencies are acting independently in what needs to be a coherent response.

And, importantly, a coherent response is not merely a goal that is out of reach. To the contrary, we now possess the requisite experience and knowledge for ascertaining the contours of a comprehensive strategy, a coherent response, and a future year program and budget to implement the strategy. It bears emphasizing here that strategy must be a precursor to budget. Put differently, dollar figures should only be attached to specific items after the rationale for those items has been carefully thought out as part of a larger, overarching framework for action.

Of course, none of this is to say that we have all the answers. Quite the opposite in fact. Indeed, our recommendations represent just one possible course of action among many, and it is for you, Congress, and the executive branch to decide jointly precisely which of these avenues, or combination thereof, should be pursued.

I would expect - and even hope - that my fellow witnesses (and the insights from the various commissions they represent) would differ with me when it comes to offering prescriptions in this area. After all, the real measure of success here, at least in my eyes, is whether our work has furthered public debate and raised questions that urgently need addressing. And that is something that I think we, taken collectively, have done.

In any case, my vision of a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy would incorporate a full spectrum of activities, from prevention and deterrence to retribution and prosecution to domestic response preparedness. All too often, these elements of strategy are treated in isolation. Such a strategy must incorporate both the marshaling of domestic resources and the engagement of international allies and assets. And it requires monitoring and measuring the effectiveness ("benchmarking") of the many programs that implement this strategy so as to lead to common standards, practices, and procedures.

In our (CSIS) report on CBRN terrorism, we set out a roadmap of near-term and long-term priorities for senior federal officials to marshal federal, state, local, private sector, and non-governmental resources in order to counter the terrorist threat. Our findings and recommendations speak not only to "the usual suspects" at each level of government but also to new actors, both public and private, that have taken on added salience in the current security environment. With your patience, I will elaborate upon the highlights of our blueprint, beginning with a clearer outline of the structure of our suggested national strategy.

In our view, a complete CBRN counterterrorism strategy involves both (1) preventing an attack from occurring (our first priority should always be to get there before the bomb goes off), which includes deterrence, non-proliferation, counter-proliferation and preemption, and (2) preparing federal, state, local, private sector and non-governmental capabilities to respond to an actual attack. In short, our counterterrorism capabilities and organizations must be strengthened, streamlined, and then synergized so that effective prevention will enhance domestic response preparedness and vice versa.

On the prevention side, a multifaceted strategy (encompassing the constituent elements just enumerated) is in order. The common thread underpinning all of these, however, is the need for a first-rate intelligence capability. More specifically, the breadth, depth and uncertainty of the terrorist threat demands significant investment, coordination and re-tooling of the intelligence process across the board for the pre-attack (warning), trans-attack (preemption) and post-attack ("whodunit") phases.

Our list of recommendations on the intelligence side is extensive. I will not reiterate that list here, though it should be noted that its scope is broad, including everything from enhancing our all-source intelligence and analytical capabilities to "tapping" the scientific and biomedical research communities for their applicable expertise.

Several of the steps that we recommend with a view towards strengthening the intelligence community may require significant changes to intelligence programs and budgets. And, since current intelligence needs exceed available dollars, investments in this area will have to be prioritized. While our report does not attach dollar figures to its recommendations, we do distinguish between first-, second-, and third-order priorities, with the implementation of first-order items being called for immediately (within 180 days).

Before turning to the response preparedness aspect of the equation, two further components of prevention merit comment, namely, non-proliferation and counter-proliferation. We need to think about ways to reassess arms control measures to limit proliferation of CBRN weapons and material. This cannot be monitored like a START agreement, but the United States should take the lead in building international support for multinational activities, while signaling the right to take action, including military actions, against violators.

In so doing, though, it must be kept in mind that traditional arms control measures - which assume large state efforts with detectable weapons production programs - may influence behavior but will be more effective vis-à-vis state-sponsors of terrorism than non-state actors. However, by focusing on state actors, we may also capture non-state actors swimming in their wake.

In the space that remains, I want to focus on domestic response preparedness because that is where the matter of effective organization figures most prominently. And, in my view, effective organization is the concept that not only lies at the very heart of a comprehensive national counterterrorism strategy but also underpins it - from start (meaning pre-event preventive, preemptive and preparedness measures), to finish (meaning post-event crisis and consequence management, and response).

In so far as domestic response preparedness is concerned, the traditional distinction currently operative - which draws an artificial line between crisis management and consequence management - is unworkable in practice. In fact, crisis and consequence management will occur simultaneously, and there will be no hand-off of the baton from the crisis managers (responsible for immediate response, and apprehension of perpetrators), to the consequence managers (responsible for treating mass casualties and restoring essential services). (The caveat, of course, is if we receive advance warning of an event or if the event is "fixed" (such as the presidential inauguration). In these instances, it will indeed be possible to draw a bright line between crisis and consequence management).

I think the "line" was originally intended only to bound certain generic types of activities, for example, crime scene evidence as opposed to searching for survivors. Sadly, it has been bent and distorted over time to support one or another agency's fight for leadership.

This generally artificial distinction, however, distracts us from the more important underlying question of whether we are properly organized in terms of domestic response preparedness and writ large (in terms of meeting the CBRN terrorism challenge as a whole). Are our existing structures, policies, and institutions adequate? CBRN terrorism is inherently a cross-cutting issue, but, to date, the government is organized vertically.

Our report treats the critical - and wide-ranging - question of organization by breaking it down into three different sub-themes: (1) effective organization at the federal level; (2) effective organization at the state and local levels, and the federal interface; and (3) effective organization of the medical, public health, and human services communities. Let me deal with each of these in turn.

First, and in some ways, most importantly, the federal government must lead by example by organizing itself effectively to meet the terrorist challenge. But what does this mean? While I can offer only a barebones outline in the allotted space, such a "skeleton" should still prove useful as a basis for discussion on how to proceed.

As a starting point, effective CBRN counterterrorism requires the coordinated participation of many federal agencies. To ensure that departmental and agency programs, when amalgamated, constitute an integrated and coherent plan, we need a high-level official to serve as the epicenter or "belly button" for our efforts. And that position needs to marry together three criteria: authority, accountability and resources.

One way to achieve this end, and the course that we have suggested, is to establish a Senate-confirmed position of Assistant to the President or Vice-President for Combating Terrorism. The Assistant for Combating Terrorism would be responsible for issuing an annual national counterterrorism strategy and plan. This strategy would serve as the basis to recommend the overall level of counterterrorism spending and how that money should be allocated among the various departments and agencies of the federal government with counterterrorism responsibilities. To be explicit, it is the budgetary role of the Assistant that, at one and the same time, gives the position "teeth" and generates the desirability of, if not the outright need for, Senate-confirmation. Put another way, unless we obey the golden rule (he or she with the gold rules), the Assistant (the counterterrorism coordinator) will not have sway over departmental and agency policies.

Accordingly, we recommend that the Assistant be granted limited direction over departments' and agencies' budgets in the form of certification and passback authority. In practice, this means that the Assistant would possess the authority to certify future-year plans, program budgets and annual budgets. And, where budgetary requests fail to adhere to the President's overall policy and budgetary agenda, the requests would be passed back to departments and agencies for revision. Correlatively, we suggest that the Assistant be given authority to decrement up to ten percent of any "counterterrorism-support" program that does not meet the requirements of the nation's counterterrorism plan.

In conjunction with the above, each federal department and agency with a counterterrorism mission should develop five-year plans and long-term research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E) plans. These would then be coordinated by the Assistant to the President or Vice-President, who should support a holistic effort to use technology to improve domestic response preparedness and tie RDT&E efforts to practical deployment plans.

Before turning to the congressional side of the equation, some comment upon the lead federal agency issue is needed - though I will confine myself to only two points here. First, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has not been resourced to accomplish its mission as the lead agency for consequence management. Long neglected, FEMA has recently been revitalized and has distinguished itself when responding to a series of natural disasters affecting the continental United States. However, FEMA still lacks the administrative apparatus, logistical tail, and personnel necessary to take a lead role in domestic terrorism response.

Against this background, two steps should be taken. First, we need to empower FEMA. Keeping in mind that FEMA is already well integrated into activity at the state and local levels in the context of natural disasters, we should fully exploit and build on that pre-existing foundation so that FEMA is in a position to credibly assume the lead role in domestic response preparedness. With the latter aim in mind, it will not, of course, be enough simply to draw on channels and capabilities that are already in place. On the contrary, this will have to be accompanied by capitalization of FEMA, including in the form of personnel as well as administrative and logistical support.

Second, and relatedly, FEMA should be assigned the training mission for consequence management. As things presently stand, however, it is the Justice Department (and, before it, the Defense Department) that has been charged with the task. Yet, it makes little sense to hive off training for consequence management with the state and local levels from the very organization that would handle consequence management.

An additional point that I wish to make on the lead federal agency issue concerns the role of the Department of Defense (DOD). DOD's role in domestic preparedness for terrorism involving CBRN weapons has been the subject of much debate. The debate arises due to the concern that only DOD possesses the resources necessary (including transportation assets, basic supplies, communications facilities and so on) to manage the consequences of a CBRN terrorist attack. But, even the mere specter or suggestion of a lead military role raises vocal and widespread opposition on the basis of civil liberties and the damage that could potentially be caused to them if DOD were assigned the lead.

Realistically, only DOD even comes close to having the manpower and resources necessary for high-consequence (yet low-likelihood) events such as a catastrophic CBRN terrorist attack on the homeland. However, this is very different from saying that DOD should always be in charge of domestic response efforts. To the contrary, DOD should be restricted to a supporting role in domestic crises. There are several reasons for this. I will not enumerate all of them but it does bear noting that, beyond intent, perceptions are important; and the clear perception, as well as the reality, of civilian control of the military should be preserved. Indeed, this is particularly true in times of domestic crisis.

That being said, however, it is wholly appropriate for the DOD to maintain a supporting role (i.e., a role in support of the lead federal agency) in domestic crises - though we must grant the Department the resources necessary to assume this responsibility. (If the President decides to turn to the cupboard, we most certainly do not want him to find that it is bare). Perhaps it is just me, but I find it difficult to believe that, in a time of genuine crisis, the American people would take issue with what color uniform the men and women who are saving lives happen to be wearing. Even more starkly, the President should never be in the position of having to step up to the podium and say to the American people what he could have, should have, or would have done - but did not because of.... Explaining to the American people the inside the beltway debates just will not stand up if such an event occurs.

Turning now to Congress, the broad span of counterterrorism programs across federal departments and agencies is mirrored in the broad span of authority to review counterterrorism programs across a host of Congressional committees and subcommittees. Without coordination between these bodies, Members may not know how their votes on a particular budgetary item or policy will affect the overall counterterrorism program.

To remedy this, we recommend the creation of a congressional counterterrorism working group. This group should be chaired and vice-chaired by Members of the majority and minority parties, respectively, and should include senior staff from the various authorization and appropriation committees with jurisdiction over federal agencies concerned with terrorism, crisis and consequence management, and homeland defense. By means of a monthly report, the working group would keep the relevant committees apprised of ongoing legislative initiatives and funding issues in Congress.

Finally, on the international front, and as part of a comprehensive national strategy, we should seek to fortify our own defense by strengthening the consequence management capabilities of our partners worldwide. This should occur through the Department of State's Coordinator for Counterterrorism, who manages the Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST). The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should be operationally linked to this capacity in the case of bioterrorism and infectious disease emergencies.

Moving now to the state and local levels, efforts to develop a unified and effective domestic response capability are complicated by the fact that emergency responders - who will be first on the scene of a "no warning" event - are state and local (not federal) personnel. The myriad state and local jurisdictions result in "a crazy-quilt" of doctrine, legal authority, equipment, and training for emergency responders. Consider, for example, that there are an estimated 32,000 fire departments across the United States.

Furthermore, for each local and even state jurisdiction (except for prominent targets such as New York City and Washington, D.C.), the probability of an attack in that jurisdiction is perceived to be so low and the cost of training and equipping emergency responders so high that many regions may not be prepared for a high-end terrorist attack involving CBRN weapons. Indeed, federal, state, and local exercises have revealed serious deficiencies in preparedness, including severe lack of coordination.

Yet, if a terrorist event occurs, state and local emergency personnel (police, firefighters, medics) will be the initial responders and time will be of the essence in turning victims into patients. For this reason, state and local governments must continue to develop and expand their capabilities to respond to a terrorist attack, and more resources must reach the state and local level for management and execution. At the same time, however, limited resources dictate that there must be optimal transition from "ordinary" (e.g., heart attacks) to "extraordinary" events.

More broadly, federal, state, and local governments must allocate between and among one another, responsibilities and resources for domestic preparedness. Equally, federal, state, and local governments must also make a concerted effort to ensure the harmonization and interoperability of equipment and incident command structures.

Let me be clear: nothing short of the very essence of federalism is at stake here. Without working relationships of trust and mutual confidence between and among all of the actors that are key to our counterterrorism effort, our national strategy to prevent and prepare for terrorism will be defeated. We must, therefore, build bridges - not only between federal authorities and state and local officials (what we have termed "the federal interface") but also between federal entities, as well as from one state to another.

How best to construct those bridges is, of course, the subject of much debate. A good start, however, would consist, in part, of the following. In addition to expanding training and exercising of state and local emergency responders, we should create a central clearinghouse to synthesize lessons learned from exercises. Doing so, would permit better allocation/appropriation of resources, and would facilitate the emergence nationwide of (common) best practices.

As a corollary, and with a view to formulating and implementing national standards and baselines, we should develop matrices for judging the effectiveness of training (no metric currently exists), and we should strive to make exercises more realistic, robust, and useful (e.g., increase the number of "no-notice" exercises). The value of training and exercising must not be underestimated. Hopefully, it will be the closest we get to the real thing. And if not, it allows us to make the big mistakes on the practice field and not on Main Street, USA.

Successful "bridge-building" requires combining both a bottom-up and a top-down perspective. On the one hand, and for (a bottom-up) example, state and local emergency responders need to have a seat at the intergovernmental table so as to ensure seamless coordination between state and local emergency personnel and later-arriving federal assets. On the other hand, and as a further (top-down) example, federal expertise and capabilities - particularly that which resides in the Department of Defense - are vital and should be shared. Further to this point, the Defense Department has traditionally provided assistance to federal, state, and local officials in neutralizing, dismantling, and disposing of explosive ordinance, as well as radiological, biological, and chemical materials.

Bridge-building also involves reaching out to relative newcomers to the national security field - in particular, the medical, public health, and human services communities - who need to be integrated into our counterterrorist effort and our (comprehensive) national strategy. These actors are especially critical to bioterrorism preparedness as they would play a prominent role in detection and containment of such an event. Here again, however, the need for effective organization stands in marked contrast to the present state of affairs, which is sub-optimal at best.

Put bluntly, the biomedical, public health, and human services communities are under-equipped for a biological attack and for infectious disease in general. Indeed, the core capacity for public health and medical care needs to be greatly enhanced with respect to detection and treatment of infectious disease. Accordingly, our recommendations on the public health/medical side read like a veritable "laundry list."

Even without reiterating our full complement of suggestions, the extensive and sweeping character of what is needed is evident in but a partial list: capitalize the public health structure; develop a national bioterrorism surveillance capacity; develop rapid and more reliable diagnostic capabilities and systems; develop a comprehensive strategy for assuring surge capacity for healthcare; streamline national pharmaceutical stockpiling efforts; and increase research and development for new pharmaceuticals, vaccines and antidotes.

To these (and other) ends, the biomedical, public health and human services communities must work in greater partnership with each other - and must coordinate more effectively with the larger national security community. Instead, however, we currently have a series of "disconnects."

Within the federal government alone, for instance, we have yet to develop (for counterterrorist purposes) smooth channels of inter-agency and intra-agency coordination and cooperation across and within federal agencies that have worked little together in the past (such as the intelligence community and the Departments of Defense, Justice, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, and Energy).

Further, and with specific regard to the private sector, the expertise of the commercial pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors has yet to be genuinely leveraged. This situation must change, and new funding strategies must be explored to "incentivize" engagement of the private sector as a whole in the task of preparedness planning and capability-building.

It is plain that the challenges that we face are great. But I am confident that we, as a nation, are up to the task. Let me close, now, on a more personal note.

Last year, on 19 April, I had the privilege to attend the dedication of the Oklahoma City National Memorial on the five-year anniversary of the attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Building. Just last week, I was in Oklahoma City and had the opportunity to visit the National Memorial Center, an interactive museum, depicting the story of the largest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. I highly recommend visiting the museum, it was profoundly moving. I was reminded that America is not immune from terrorism and that, if such an act of violence can occur in America's heartland, it can occur anywhere. I was reminded that the consequences of such acts of violence are very real -- in this case 168 innocent lives were lost, and many many more affected. I was reminded that those first on the scene of such a tragedy are "ordinary" citizens, followed up by local emergency responders such as firemen, EMTs, and policemen, all of whom are overwhelmed - except for the desire to save lives.

I was touched by the experience, of course - but, most of all, I left proud. Proud of Oklahoma's elected officials, proud of the survivors, proud of the many thousands of men, women, and children who lost family members, friends, and neighbors. And perhaps most importantly, I left proud to be an American. For, what I saw was the community's strength and resilience. I believe this indomitable spirit; this refusal to be cowed; the will of the people to return, to rebuild, to heal, and to prosper best represents America's attitude towards terrorism.

Put differently, at the end of the day, it all comes down to leadership. And policy without resources is merely rhetoric. But, if the President and Congress set their sights on the careful crafting and comprehensive implementation of a national counterterrorism strategy, it will happen. However, this process of marshaling our wherewithal so as to turn concepts into capabilities will require not only vision but also political will.

Despite the magnitude of the challenge, there is no doubt that we can rise to it. Undoubtedly, this hearing represents a forceful and important step in the direction of a national plan. And it is my hope that our report will provide President Bush and Congress with some of the critical insights necessary to execute a comprehensive counterterrorism plan. Developing, implementing, and sustaining such a strategy and plan must be one of the highest priorities for U.S. national security.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you today. I would be pleased to try to answer any questions you may have.

[birther truther tenther]

ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN

Senior Fellow and Codirector
Middle East Studies

Expertise: Middle East and South Asian security issues; national security; lessons of modern War; defense budgets; defense intelligence; military balance. Anthony Cordesman joined CSIS from Senator John McCain's office], where he served as assistant for national security. He is also an adjunct professor of national security studies at Georgetown University and a military analyst for ABC-TV. Mr. Cordesman was recently a Wilson Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian. He has had numerous awards, including the Distinguished Service Medal and has previously held senior positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the State Department, the Department of Energy, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. His overseas posts were on the U.S. delegation to NATO and as a director in the NATO International Staff, working on Middle Eastern security issues. Professor Cordesman has written and lectured extensively on the Middle East and the Gulf, the U.S. and Soviet military balance, U.S. forces and defense budgets, and the lessons of war. He has written many books, most recently, The Gulf War (Westview, 1995) and the Arab-Israeli Military Balance and the Middle East Peace Process (Westview, 1996). He has also written numerous magazine and newspaper articles and has often appeared on radio and television. He was formerly the international editor of the Armed Forces Journal and U.S. editor of Armed Forces (UK).

The following are excerpts from Cordesman's report.   Please read the full report at the link below.

Retrieved from:
http://web.archive.org/web/19970708152302/www.csis.org/mideast/terror.html

Terrorism and the Threat From
Weapons of Mass Destruction
in the Middle East

The Problem of Paradigm Shifts

Working Draft

Anthony H. Cordesman
Senior Fellow and Co-Director
Middle East Studies Program
October 22, 1996

EXCERPTS
The literature on terrorism tends to have an unfortunate ritual character. First, there are the "alarmists" who make every incident into a megatrend, every possible scenario into a cause for immediate action, every contact and liaison between extremists into a network, and every hostile political faction into a super-intelligent nest of demons. These "alarmists" are supported by "techno-alarmists" who exaggerate the ease of weaponizing and using new terrorist devices and the vulnerabilities of modern societies by several orders of magnitude. Finally, they are supported by the "totalitarian solutionists" who support the alarmists by advocating solutions that would force the restructuring of modern societies -- often in ways whose consequences would be worse than the real-world problem -- and who often advocate unproven and extremely expensive technologies.

This terrorizing approach to terrorism may well have begun with Aesop's fable about the "boy who cried wolf" -- the boy being the world's first counter-terrorist. The eventual triumph of the wolf may also have led to the first counter-terrorism conspiracy theorist. There are equally strong indications that many writers about terrorism trace their intellectual roots to the story of "Chicken Little," the first counter-terrorism expert to turn a minor incident into an announcement that the sky was falling.

In all seriousness, these tendencies to exaggerate the threat do much to explain why many politicians and officials tend to ignore warnings about terrorism. They also help explain why governments tend to work on the basis of bureaucratic momentum and focus on the terrorist threats they already know. The flood of warnings about possible threats, technologies, and vulnerabilities creates a "noise level" of potential demands that is impossible for governments to deal with. The end result is that bureaucracies often deal with possible threats by focusing on clich‚s like strengthening coordination, by sub-optimizing on solutions that can only deal with a narrow range of threats, and by focusing only on those types of threats that have already been proven to exist.

At the same time, any one who has spent any time working on the problems posed by terrorism is struck by the fact that even paranoids face real terrorists. It is impossible to ignore the growing vulnerability of modern society, and the fact that major risks do exist. Similarly, it is impossible to study the subject without being struck by the gap that exists between the past failure of most terrorists to go beyond routine acts of violence and relatively minor attempts to use new techniques and technologies and the potential damage more effective forms of terrorism could do.

Ridiculous as most novels and screenplays about super-terrorists may be, they conceal the same kernel of truth as exaggerated warnings from experts on counter-terrorism. The impact of terrorism is currently far more limited by the failure or unwillingness of terrorists to exploit new technologies and complex vulnerabilities than by the inherent difficulty in conducting much more lethal attacks. The problem is not a lack of credible means to an end, but rather the lack of a real-world "Dr. No" or "Professor Moriarity."
Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Problem of Paradigm Shifts

Even a real-world "Dr. No" or "Professor Moriarity," however, would normally have a limited impact. As long as the emergence of a "super terrorist" was tied to conventional means of attack, the resulting threat or damage would not have strategic importance. The cost and casualties of such attacks might be much higher than those of conventional terrorism, but they would not pose an existential threat to the state under attack or force that state to make dramatic changes in its policies.

This is why governments can normally accept the cost of taking a reactive approach to potential new terrorist threats. It may be unpleasant to face the fact that accepting moderate casualties as the result of a new form of terrorist activity is more cost-effective than attempting to prevent all new forms of terrorism. The fact is, however, that people do die and many die violently. Every activity in government -- whether it is counter-terrorism, road repair, or medical treatment -- involves a tacit or explicit acceptance of actuarial trade-offs in cost-effectiveness in which a government accepts the death of its citizens in order to save money, preserve personal freedom, or concentrate on higher priority problems. It is scarcely important to the dead whether they have been killed by government choices regarding counter-terrorism or the funding of kidney transplants, and killed as a result of deliberate bureaucratic choices or a decision to ignore the actuarial consequences of public policy.
Accepting "Unacceptable" Risks

Given these realities, scenarios dealing with "super terrorism" must be kept in careful perspective. It is possible to postulate relatively high levels of casualties from terrorism using conventional weapons and technologies. Exploding a jumbo jet, blowing up a crowded office building, destroying an isolated urban water supply, and destroying a key tunnel or bridge during peak traffic periods are typical cases in point. It is equally possible to postulate serious economic costs from new forms of terrorism like cyberterrorism and successful attacks on governmental data systems, national financial systems, and controls of key utility, energy processing and export facilities. Attacks on key leaders can destabilize or paralyze some governments, and attacks on religious or highly sensitive political symbols can trigger levels of political disorder and violence out of any proportion to the casualties and physical damage involved.

Nevertheless, it may be necessary to accept the cost of "unacceptable" risks. Bad as the consequences of such attacks may be, they will normally equate to the impact of the natural disasters that most societies can face and adapt to. Governments can afford to wait until they either must deal with an actual contingency, or have clear evidence and strategic warning of the need to make major shifts in their counter-terrorist activities.
Weapons of Mass Destruction and the "Paradigm Shift"

Weapons of mass destruction, however, present a different problem. Under many conditions, a single act of terrorism can kill thousands of people and/or induce levels of panic and political reaction that governments cannot easily deal with. Under some conditions, the use of weapons of mass destruction can pose an existential threat to the existing social and political structure of a small country -- particularly one where much of the population and governing elite is concentrated in a single urban area.

The comparative seriousness of these risks are illustrated in Table One, which summarizes the potential casualties resulting from the use of a weapon of mass destruction in an urban area similar to the capital or major urban center of most Middle Eastern countries.


Quote
The Problem of Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare

Existing and projected detection and control technologies, arms control proposals, and concepts for missile defense assume that the primary threats are organized states and that relatively large efforts must be used.

Conventional structures of deterrence assume identifiable and limited sets of opponents and similar values in dealing with issues like mutual destruction. Terrorist movements may be willing to take catastrophic risks, as may leaders who identify themselves with the state and/or see martyrdom as a valid alternative to victory.

War may not be between states or fought for limited strategic objectives. It may be a war of proxies or terrorists. It may be fought to destroy peoples or with minimal regard for collateral damage and risks.

The target of unconventional uses of weapons of mass destruction may not be military in the normal sense of the term. It may be a peace process, US commitment to the defense of a given region, a peacekeeping force, an election or ruling elite, or growing cooperation between formerly hostile groups.

Terrorist organizations have already attempted to use crude chemical weapons. The development and use of chemical and biological weapons is well within the capability of many extremist and terrorist movements, and states can transfer weapons or aid such movements indirectly or with plausible deniability.

Covert or unconventional delivery means may be preferable to both states and non-state organizations. Cargo ships, passenger aircraft, commercial vehicles, dhows, or commercial cargo shipments can all be used, and routed through multiple destinations. A well established series of covert transport and smuggling networks exist throughout the region. Biological weapons can be manufactured in situ.

The Marine Corps Barracks incident has already shown the potential value of "mass terrorism," as has the media impact of the Oklahoma City bombing and the disruptive effect of far more limited events like the suicide bombings by Hamas and the assassination of Yitzak Rabin.

Biological and chemical weapons present special problems because they can be used in so many ways. Chemical poisons have been used to contaminate Israeli fruit and Chilean food exports. Infectious biological agents could be used to mirror image local diseases, as well as agents with long gestation times. Persistent nerve agents could be used in subways, large buildings, shopping malls/bazaars, etc. to create both immediate casualties and long term risks. Mixes of biological and chemical agents could be used to defeat detection, protection gear or vaccines.

Arms control efforts assume large state efforts with detectable manufacturing and weaponization programs in peacetime. The development of a capability to suddenly manufacture several hundred biological and chemical weapons with little or no warning is well within the state of the art using nothing but commercial supplies and equipment, and much of the R&D effort could be conducted as civil or defensive research.

Unconventional and terrorist uses of weapons can involve the use of extremely high risk biological weapons transmitted by human carriers, commercial cargoes, etc.

The incentives for the unconventional use of weapons of mass destruction increase in proportion to the lack of parity in conventional weapons, the feelings of hopelessness of alienated or extremist groups, or the prospect of catastrophic defeat.

Similarly, the incentive for the unconventional use of weapons of mass destruction will increase in direct proportion to the perceived effectiveness of theater missile and other regular military defense systems.

Rogue operations will be a constant temptation for state intelligence groups, militant wings of extremist groups, revolutionary forces. etc.

Quote
Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Middle East

Many of the previous comments apply to any region in the world, but the Middle East is not any region. It is a region with a unique level of violence and a well established history of terrorism. It is also a region where Table Three shows that a process of creeping proliferation is becoming heavily institutionalized in nations such as Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Syria, and Yemen.

The Middle East is also a region where the lines between state activity and terrorism have long been blurred. Admittedly, the term "terrorist state" has become little more than an irritating strategic clich‚, and there is no axiomatic correlation between state efforts at proliferation and terrorist access to weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, it would be naive to assume that states like Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Syria have no elements that would take the risk of supporting terrorists -- or "freedom fighters" -- that could be used as direct or indirect proxies and would never use the existence of such terrorists as covers for covert attacks.

Quote
Israel
Delivery Systems
New IRBM/ICBM range high payload booster developed with South Africa.
Up to 50 "Jericho I" missiles deployed in shelters on mobile launchers with up to 400 miles range with a 2,200 pound payload, and with possible nuclear warhead storage nearby. Unverified claims that up to 100 missiles are deployed west of Jerusalem.
Jericho II missiles now deployed, and some were brought to readiness for firing during the Gulf War. These missiles seem to include a single stage follow-on to the Jericho I and a multistage longer range missile. The latter missile seems to have a range of up to 900 miles with a 2,200 pound payload, and may be a cooperative development with South Africa. (Extensive reporting of such cooperation was in the press during October 25 and 26, 1989).
Jericho II missile production facility at Be'er Yakov.
A major missile test took place on September 14, 1989. It was either a missile test or failure of Ofeq-2 satellite.
Work on development of TERCOM type smart warheads. Possible cruise missile guidance developments using GPS navigation systems.
F-15, F-16, F-4E, and Phantom 2000 fighter-bombers capable of long range refueling and of carrying nuclear and chemical bombs.
Lance missile launchers and 160 Lance missiles with 130 kilometers range.
MAR-290 rocket with 30 kilometers range believed to be deployed.
Popeye air-to-surface missile may have nuclear variant.
MAR-350 surface-to-surface missile with range of 56 miles and 735 lb. payload believed to have completed development or to be in early deployment.
Israel seeking super computers for Technion Institute (designing ballistic missile RVs), Hebrew University (may be engaged in hydrogen bomb research), and Israeli Military Industries (maker of "Jericho II" and Shavit booster).

Chemical Weapons
Reports that mustard and nerve gas production facility was established in 1982 in the restricted area in the Sinai near Dimona do not seem correct. May have some facilities. May have capacity to produce other gases. Probable stocks of bombs, rockets, and artillery.
Extensive laboratory research into gas warfare and defense.
Development of defensive systems includes Shalon Chemical Industries protection gear, Elbit Computer gas detectors, and Bezal R&D air crew protection system.
Extensive field exercises in chemical defense.
Gas masks stockpiled, and distributed to population with other civil defense instructions during Gulf War.
Warhead delivery capability for bombs, rockets, and missiles, but none now believed to be equipped with chemical agents.

Biological Weapons
Extensive research into weapons and defense.
Ready to quickly produce biological weapons, but no reports of active production effort.

Nuclear Weapons
Director of CIA indicated in May 1989 that Israel might be seeking to construct a thermonuclear weapon.
Estimates of numbers and types of weapons differ sharply.
At least a stockpile of 60-80 plutonium weapons. May have well over 100 nuclear weapons assemblies, with some weapons with yields over 100 Kilotons, and some with possible ER variants or variable yields.
Stockpile of up to 200-300 weapons is possible.
Possible facilities include production of weapons grade Plutonium at Dimona, nuclear weapons design facility at Soreq (south of Tel Aviv), missile test facility at Palmikim, nuclear armed missile storage facility at Kefar Zekharya, nuclear weapons assembly facility at Yodefat, and tactical nuclear weapons storage facility at Eilabun in eastern Galilee.

Missile Defenses
Patriot missiles with future PAC-3 upgrade to reflect lessons of the Gulf War.
Arrow 2 two-stage ATBM with slant intercept ranges at altitudes of 8-10 and 50 kilometers speeds of up to Mach 9, plus possible development of the Rafale AB-10 close in defense missile with ranges of 10-20 kilometers and speeds of up to Mach 4.5. Tadiran BM/C4I system and "Music" phased array radar. Israel plans to deploy two batteries of the Arrow to cover Israel, each with four launchers, to protect up to 85% of its population.(5)

Advanced Intelligence Systems
The Shavit I launched Israel's satellite payload on September 19, 1989. It used a three stage booster system capable of launching a 4,000 pound payload over 1,200 miles or a 2,000 pound payload over 1,800 miles.
Ofeq 2 launched in April, 1990 -- one day after Saddam Hussein threatened to destroy Israel with chemical weapons if it should attack Baghdad. Launched first intelligence satellite on April 5, 1995, covering Syria, Iran, and Iraq in orbit every 90 minutes.
The Ofeq 3 satellite is a 495 pound system launched using the Shavit launch rocket, and is believed to carry an imagery system. Its orbit passes over or near Damascus, Tehran, and Baghdad.(6)


Quote
Iran

Delivery Systems
Has new long range North Korean Scuds - with ranges near 500 kilometers. May manufacture missiles in Iran in future, possibly as cooperative effort with Syria.
Probably has ordered North Korean No Dong missile which can carry nuclear and biological missile ranges of up to 900 kilometers. Can reach virtually any target in Gulf, Turkey, and Israel, although CIA now estimates deliveries will only begin in 1997-1999.(7)
Su-24 long-range strike fighters with range-payloads roughly equivalent to US F-111 and superior to older Soviet medium bombers.
Reports of North Korean delveries of 100 Scud Bs and 100 Scud C between 1990 and 1996.
Bought CSS-8 surface-to-surface missiles from China with ranges of 130-150 kilometers.
Used regular Scud extensively during Iran-Iraq War. Has 6-12 Scud launchers and up to 200 Scud B (R-17E) missiles with 230-310 KM range. Scud missiles were provided by Libya and North Korea.
May have placed order for PRC-made M-9 missile (280-620 kilometers range). More likely that PRC is giving assistance in missile R&D and production facilities.
Iranian made IRAN 130 rocket with 150+ kilometers range.
Iranian Oghab (Eagle) rocket with 40+ kilometers range.
New SSM with 125 mile range may be in production, but could be modified FROG.
F-4D/E fighter bombers with capability to carry extensive payloads to ranges of 450 miles.
Can modify HY-2 Silkworm missiles and SA-2 surface-to-air missiles to deliver weapons of mass destruction.
Large numbers of multiple rocket launchers and tube artillery for short range delivery of chemical weapons.
Experimenting in cruise missile development.

Chemical Weapons
At least two major research and production facilities.
India is assisting in the construction of a major new plant at Qazvim, near Tehran, to manufacture phosphorous pentasulfide, a major precursor for nerve gas. The plant is front by Meli Agrochemicals, and the program was negotiated by Dr. Mejid Tehrani Abbaspour, a chief security advisor to Rafsanjani.
Made limited use of chemical weapons at end of the Iran-Iraq War.
Began to create stockpiles of cyanide (cyanogen chloride), phosgene, and mustard gas weapons after 1985.
Include bombs and artillery.
Production of nerve gas weapons started no later than 1994.

Biological Weapons
Extensive laboratory and research capability.
Weapons effort documented as early as 1992.
Bioresearch effort sophisticated enough to produce biological weapons as lethal as small nuclear weapons.
Seems to have the production facilities to make dry storable weapons. This would allow it to develop suitable missile warheads and bombs and covert devices.
May be involved in active weapons production, but no evidence to date that this is the case.

Nuclear Weapons
In 1984, revived nuclear weapons program begun under Shah.
Received significant West German and Argentine corporate support in some aspects of nuclear technology during the Iran-Iraq War..
Limited transfers of centrifuge and other weapons related technology from PRC, possibly Pakistan.
Stockpiles of uranium and mines in Yazd area.
Seems to have attempted to buy fissile material from Khazakstan.
Russian agreement to build up to four reactors, beginning with a complex at Bushehr -- with two 1,000-1,200 megawatt reactors and two 465 megawatt reactors, and provide significant nuclear technology.
Chinese agreement to provide significant nuclear technology transfer and possible sale of two 300 megawatt pressurized water reactors.
No way to tell when current efforts will produce a weapon, and unclassified lists of potential facilities have little credibility. We simply do not know where Iran is developing its weapons. IAEA has found no indications of weapons effort, but found no efforts in Iraq in spring of 1990. IAEA only formally inspects Iran's small research reactors. Its visits to other Iranian sites are not thorough enough to confirm or deny whether Iran has such activities.
Timing of weapons acquisition depends heavily on whether Iran can buy fissile material -- if so it has the design capability and can produce weapons in 1-2 years -- or must develop the capability to process Plutonium or enrich Uranium -- in which case, it is likely to be 5-10 years.

Quote
Iraq
Delivery Systems
Prior to the Gulf War, Iraq had extensive delivery systems incorporating long-range strike aircraft with refueling capabilities and several hundred regular and improved, longer-range Scud missiles, some with chemical warheads. These systems included:
Tu-16 and Tu-22 bombers.
MiG-29 fighters.
Mirage F-1, MiG-23BM, and Su-22 fighter attack aircraft.
A Scud force with a minimum of 819 missiles.
Extended range Al-Hussein Scud variants (600 kilometer range) extensively deployed throughout Iraq, and at three fixed sites in northern, western, and southern Iraq..
Developing Al-Abbas missiles (900 kilometer range) Al-Abbas which could reach targets in Iran, the Persian Gulf, Israel, Turkey, and Cyprus.
Long-range super guns with ranges of up to 600 kilometers.
Iraq also engaged in efforts aimed at developing the Tamuz liquid fuel led missile with a range of over 2,000 kilometers, and a solid fueled missile with a similar range. Clear evidence that at least one design was to have a nuclear warhead.
Iraq attempted to conceal a plant making missile engines from the UN inspectors. It only admitted this plant existed in 1995, raising new questions about how many of its missiles have been destroyed.
Iraq produced or assembled 80 Scud missiles it its own factories. Some 53 seem to have been unusable, but 10 are still unaccounted for.
Had designed work underway for a nuclear warhead for its long range missiles.
The Gulf War deprived Iraq of some of its MiG-29s, Mirage F-1s, MiG-23BMs, and Su-22s.
Since the end of the war, the UN inspection regime has also destroyed many of Iraq's long-range missiles. Iraq, however, maintains a significant delivery capability consisting of:
HY-2, SS-N-2, and C-601 cruise missiles, which are unaffected by UN cease-fire terms.
FROG-7 rockets with 70 kilometer ranges, also allowed under UN resolutions.
Multiple rocket launchers and tube artillery.
Several Scud launchers
Iraq claims to have manufactured only 80 missile assemblies, 53 of which were unusable.
UNSCOM claims that 10 are unaccounted for.
US experts believe Iraq may still have components for several dozen extended-range Scud missiles.
In addition, Iraq has admitted to:
Hiding its capability to manufacturing its own Scuds.
Developing an extended range variant of the FROG-7 called the Laith. The UN claims to have tagged all existing FROG-7s to prevent any extension of their range beyond the UN imposed limit of 150 kilometers for Iraqi missiles.
Experimenting with cruise missile technology and ballistic missile designs with ranges up to 3,000 kilometers.
Flight testing Al-Hussein missiles with chemical warheads in April 1990.
Developing biological warheads for the Al Hussein missile as part of Project 144 at Taji.
Initiating a research and development program for a nuclear warhead missile delivery system.
Successfully developing and testing a warhead separation system.
Indigenously developing, testing, and manufacturing advanced rocket engines to include liquid-propellant designs.
Conducting research into the development of Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs) for the dissemination of biological agents.
Attempting to expand its Ababil-100 program designed to build surface-to-surface missiles with ranges beyond the permitted 100-150 kilometers.
Starting an indigenous 600 mm supergun design effort.
Starting additional long-range missile programs, with ranges of 900, 2000, and 3,000 kilometers. US and UN officials conclude further that:
Iraq is concentrating procurement efforts on rebuilding its ballistic missile program using a clandestine network of front companies to obtain the necessary materials and technology from European and Russian firms.
This equipment is then concealed and stockpiled for assembly concomitant with the end of the UN inspection regime.
The equipment clandestinely sought by Iraq includes advanced missile guidance components, such as accelerometers and gyroscopes, specialty metals, special machine tools, and a high-tech, French-made, million-dollar furnace designed to fabricate engine parts for missiles.
Jordan found that Iraq was smuggling missile components through Jordan in early December, 1995.
US satellite photographs reveal that Iraq has rebuilt its Al-Kindi missile research facility.
Iraq retains the technology it acquired before the war and evidence clearly indicates an ongoing research and development effort, in spite of the UN sanctions regime.
The fact that the agreement allows Iraq to continue producing and testing short range missiles (less than 150 kilometers range) has meant it can retain significant missile efforts.

Chemical Weapons
In revelations to the UN, Iraq admitted that, prior to the Gulf War, it:
Maintained large stockpiles of mustard gas, and the nerve agents Sarin and Tabun.
Produced binary Sarin filled artillery shells, 122 mm rockets, and aerial bombs.
Manufactured enough precursors to produce 490 tons of the nerve agent VX. These precursors included 65 tons of choline and 200 tons of phosphorous pentasulfide and di-isopropylamine Tested Ricin, a deadly nerve agent, for use in artillery shells.
Had three flight tests of long range Scuds with chemical warheads.
Had large VX production effort underway at the time of the Gulf War. The destruction of the related weapons and feedstocks has been claimed by Iraq, but not verified by UNSCOM The majority of Iraq's chemical agents were manufactured at a supposed pesticide plant located at Muthanna.
Various other production facilities were also used, including those at Salman Pak, Samara, and Habbiniyah. Though severely damaged during the war, the physical plant for many of these facilities has been rebuilt.
Iraq possessed the technology to produce a variety of other persistent and non-persistent agents.
The Gulf War and subsequent UN inspection regime may have largely eliminated these stockpiles and reduced production capability.
US experts believe Iraq has concealed significant stocks of precursors. It also appears to retain significant amounts of production equipment dispersed before, or during, Desert Storm and not recovered by the UN.
Iraq has developed basic chemical warhead designs for Scud missiles, rockets, bombs, and shells.
Iraq also has spray dispersal systems.
Iraq maintains extensive stocks of defensive equipment.
The UN maintains that Iraq is not currently producing chemical agents, but the UN is also concerned that Iraq has offered no evidence that it has destroyed its VX production capability and/or stockpile.
Further, Iraq retains the technology it acquired before the war and evidence clearly indicates an ongoing research and development effort, in spite of the UN sanctions regime.
Recent UNSCOM work confirms that Iraq did deploy gas-filled 155 mm artillery and 122 mm multiple rocket rounds into the rear areas of the KTO during the Gulf War.
These weapons had no special visible markings, and were often stored in the same area as conventional weapons.
Now has the technology to produce stable, highly lethal VX gas with long storage times.
Has developed improved binary weapons since the Gulf War.

Biological Weapons
Had highly compartmented "black" program with far tighter security regulations than chemical program.
Had 18 major sites for some aspect of biological weapons effort before the Gulf War. Most were non-descript and have no guards or visible indications they were a military facility.
The US targeted only one site during the Gulf War. It struck two sites, one for other reasons. It also struck at least two targets with no biological facilities that it misidentified.
Systematically lied about biological weapons effort until 1995. First stated that had small defensive efforts, but no offensive effort. In July, 1995, admitted had a major offensive effort. In October, 1995, finally admitted major weaponization effort.
Iraq has continued to lie about its biological weapons effort since October, 1995. It has claimed the effort is head by Dr. Taha, a woman who only headed a subordinate effort. It has not admitted to any help by foreign personnel or contractors. It has claimed to have destroyed its weapons, but the one site UNSCOM inspectors visited showed no signs of such destruction and was later said to be the wrong site. It has claimed only 50 people were employed full time, but the scale of the effort would have required several hundred.
The August 1995 defection of Lieutenant General Hussein Kamel Majid, formerly in charge of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, revealed the extent of this biological weapons program. Reports indicate that Iraq tested at least 7 principal biological agents for use against humans.
Anthrax, Botulinum, and Aflatoxin known to be weaponized.
Looked at viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Examined the possibility of weaponizing Gas Gangrene and Mycotoxins. Some field trials were held of these agents.
Examined foot and mouth disease, haemorrhagic conjunctivitis virus, rotavirus, and camel pox virus.
Conducted research on a "wheat pathogen" and a Mycotoxin similar to "yellow rain" defoliant. The "wheat smut" was first produced at Al Salman, and then put in major production during 1987-1988 at a plant near Mosul. Iraq claims the program was abandoned.
The defection prompted Iraq to admit that it:
Imported 39 tons of growth media for biological agents obtained from three European firms. According to UNSCOM, 17 tons remains unaccounted for. Each ton can be used to produce 10 tons of bacteriological weapons.
Imported type cultures which can be modified to develop biological weapons from the US.
Had a laboratory- and industrial-scale capability to manufacture various biological agents including the bacteria which cause anthrax and botulism; aflatoxin, a naturally occurring carcinogen; clostridium perfringens, a gangrene-causing agent; the protein toxin ricin; tricothecene mycotoxins, such as T-2 and DAS; and an anti-wheat fungus known as wheat cover smut. Iraq also conducted research into the rotavirus, the camel pox virus and the virus which causes haemorrhagic conjunctivitis.
Created at least seven primary production facilities including the Sepp Institute at Muthanna, the Ghazi Research Institute at Amaria, the Daura Foot and Mouth Disease Institute, and facilities at Al-Hakim, Salman Pak Taji, and Fudaliyah. According to UNSCOM, weaponization occurred primarily at Muthanna through May, 1987 (largely Botulinum), and then moved to Al Salman.
(Anthrax). In March, 1988 a plant was open at Al Hakim, and in 1989 an Aflatoxin plant was set up at Fudaliyah.
Manufactured 6,000 liters of concentrated Botulinum toxin and 8,425 liters of anthrax at Al-Hakim during 1990; 5400 liters of concentrated Botulinum toxin at the Daura Foot and Mouth Disease Institute from November 1990 to January 15, 1991; 400 liters of concentrated Botulinum toxin at Taji; and 150 liters of concentrated anthrax at Salman Pak. Produced 1,850 liters of Aflatoxin in solution at Fudaliyah.
Produced 340 liters of concentrated clostridium perfringens, a gangrene-causing biological agent, beginning in August, 1990.
Produced 10 liters of concentrated Ricin at Al Salam. Claim abandoned work after tests failed. Had at least 79 civilian facilities capable of playing some role in biological weapons production still extent in 1995.
Took fermenters and other equipment from Kuwait to improve effort during the Gulf War.
Extensive weaponization program Had test site about 200 kilometers west of Baghdad, used animals in cages and tested artillery and rocket rounds against live targets at ranges up to 16 kilometers.
Armed 155 mm artillery shells and 122 mm rockets with biological agents.
Conducted field trials, weaponization tests, and live firings of 122 mm rockets armed with anthrax and Botulinum toxin from March 1988 to May 1990.
Tested ricin, a deadly protein toxin, for use in artillery shells.
Iraq produced at least 191 bombs and missile warheads with biological agents.
Developed and deployed 250 pound aluminum bombs coverage in fiberglass. Bombs were designed so they could be mounted on both Soviet and French-made aircraft. They were rigged with parachutes for low altitudes drops to allow efficient slow delivery and aircraft to fly under radar coverage.
Deployed at least 166 R-400 bombs with 85 liters of biological agents each during the Gulf War. Deployed them at two sites, One was near an abandoned runway where it could fly in aircraft, arm them quickly, and disperse with no prior indication of activity and no reason for the UN to target the runway.
Total production reached at least 19,000 liters of concentrated Botulinum (10,000 liters filled into munitions);
8,500 liters of concentrated Anthrax (6,500 liters filled into munitions); and 2,500 liters of concentrated Aflatoxin (1,850 liters filled into munitions).
Weaponized at least three biological agents for use in the Gulf War. The weaponization consisted of at least 100 bombs and 15 missile warheads loaded with Botulinum. There were at least 50 R-400 air-delivered bombs and 10 missile warheads loaded with anthrax; and 16 missile warheads loaded with Aflatoxin, a natural carcinogen. The warheads were designed for operability with the Al-Hussein Scud variant.
Developed and stored drops tanks ready for use for three aircraft or RPV s with the capability of dispersing 2,000 liters of anthrax. Development took place in December 1990. Claimed later that tests showed were ineffective.
Found, however, that Iraqi Mirages were given spray tanks to disperse biological agents. Held trials as late as January 13, 1991. The Mirages were chosen because they have large 2,200 liter belly tanks and could be refueled by air, giving them a long endurance and strike range.
The tanks had electric valves to allow the agent to be released and the system was tested by releasing simulated agent into desert areas with scattered petri dishes to detect the biological agent. UNSCOM has video tapes of the aircraft.
Project 144 at Taji produced at least 25 operational Al Hussein warheads. Ten of these were hidden deep in a railway tunnel, and 15 in holes dug in an unmanned hide site along the Tigris.
Equipped crop spraying helicopters for biological warfare and held exercises and tests simulating the spraying of anthrax spores. Biological weapons were only distinguished from regular weapons by a black stripe.
The UN claims that Iraq has offered no evidence to corroborate its claims that it destroyed its stockpile of biological agents after the Gulf War. Further, Iraq retains the technology it acquired before the war and evidence clearly indicates an ongoing research and development effort, in spite of the UN sanctions regime.
UN currently inspects 79 sites -- 5 used to make weapons before war; 5 vaccine or pharmaceutical sites; 35 research and university sites; thirteen breweries, distilleries, and dairies with dual-purpose capabilities; eight diagnostic laboratories.
Retains laboratory capability to manufacture various biological agents including the bacteria which cause anthrax, botulism, tularemia and typhoid.
Many additional civilian facilities capable of playing some role in biological weapons production.

Nuclear Weapons
Inspections by UN teams have found evidence of two successful weapons designs, a neutron initiator, explosives and triggering technology needed for production of bombs, plutonium processing technology, centrifuge technology, Calutron enrichment technology, and experiments with chemical separation technology.
Iraq used Calutron, centrifuges, plutonium processing, chemical defusion and foreign purchases to create new production capability after Israel destroyed most of Osiraq.
Iraq established a centrifuge enrichment system in Rashidya and conducted research into the nuclear fuel cycle to facilitate development of a nuclear device.
After invading Kuwait, Iraq attempted to accelerate its program to develop a nuclear weapon by using radioactive fuel from French and Russian-built reactors. It made a crash effort in September, 1990 to recover enriched fuel from its supposedly safe-guarded French and Russian reactors, with the goal of producing a nuclear weapon by April, 1991. The program was only halted after Coalition air raid destroyed key facilities on January 17, 1991.
Iraq conducted research into the production of a radiological weapon, which disperses lethal radioactive material without initiating a nuclear explosion.
Orders were given in 1987 to explore the use of radiological weapons for area denial in the Iran-Iraq War.
Three prototype bombs were detonated at test sites -- one as a ground level static test and two others were dropped from aircraft.
Iraq claims the results were disappointing and the project was shelved but has no records or evidence to prove this. UN teams have found and destroyed, or secured, new stockpiles of illegal enriched material, major production and R&D facilities, and equipment-- including Calutron enriching equipment. UNSCOM believes that Iraq's nuclear program has been largely disabled and remains incapacitated, but warns that Iraq retains substantial technology and establish a clandestine purchasing system in 1990 that it has used to import forbidden components since the Gulf War. Iraq still retains the technology developed before the Gulf War and US experts believe an ongoing research and development effort continues, in spite of the UN sanctions regime.
A substantial number of declared nuclear weapons components and research equipment has never been recovered. There is no reason to assume that Iraqi declarations were comprehensive.


Source: Prepared by Anthony H. Cordesman, Co-Director, Middle East Program, CSIS

[birther truther tenther]

Quote
Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East

It should be stressed that the risks of terrorism using weapons of mass destruction are now largely theoretical. There are few actual indicators of Middle Eastern terrorist activity involving weapons of mass destruction. A few crude devices have been detected using explosives and chemical agents (grenades with a small canister of mustard gas). The Iranian Republic Guards, which are a key source of Iranian support to extremists, do operate many of Iran's chemical and biological weapons and missiles. Highly political elements of Iraq's armed forces, intelligence branches, and military procurement offices have purchased dual-use items or managed missile and WMD programs. There have been some scattered efforts by extremist movements to examine biological technology, and some crude efforts to modify insecticides, and poison fruit and vegetable exports. However, there have been no "Dr. Ben Nos" and "Professor Abu Moriarities", and there only have been hints that states are considering direct or proxy support of terrorism and unconventional warfare using weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, the question arises as to whether Middle Eastern states can rely on effective strategic warning or a reactive approach to this problem. Most new terrorist groups get at least one "free ride" or attack before their existence and/or true character is detected. An effective "super terrorist" would also have a number of major advantages over any state or conventional enemy. Virtually any means of delivery could be used. The weapon would not have to be stable, reliable, or safe This would allow the use of chemical weapons that would not be safe to militarize, and even infectious biological agents. Damage effects could be highly unpredictable since the objective would often be terror, and not predictable tactical and/or strategic effects.

Delayed effects and prolonged contamination would often be desirable. Martyrdom and/or lack of attribution would sometimes be acceptable. States supporting proxy efforts could afford to work slowly and indirectly -- potentially preserving a high degree of deniability. Massive civilian casualties would often be desirable and many terrorist movements could act without fear of retaliation or any retribution greater than for a minor act of conventional terrorism that involved much more limited casualties.
Scenarios for Terrorism Using Weapons of Mass Destruction

Table Four provides a more tangible illustration of this point. It may seem to borrow from bad spy novels and science fiction, but it lists a group of scenarios that are at least technically possible and which illustrate the difference between the options open to terrorists and the carefully structured military efforts summarized in Table Three. These scenarios also illustrate the fact that terrorists do not need sophisticated military delivery systems, do not need highly lethal weapons, can use terrorism to pose existential threats, can use complex mixes of weapons of mass destruction, and can mix terrorism with elements of covert action and deniability.

Much again depends on the human dimension and the real-world difference between actual terrorist groups and the super-terrorist that would have to execute such scenarios. The danger of such scenarios is that they tend to overstate the willingness of terrorists to turn to extreme forms of terror, their willingness to risk dying, and their ability to undetectably engage in complex scenarios. They also depend heavily on the technical ability of terrorists to obtain and control weapons of mass destruction.

There are many hostile and extremist groups in the Middle East, and many governments that are led by proven risk-takers. What is less clear is that there are efficient and willing mass murders. The low-level efforts of Middle Eastern terrorists to use chemical and biological weapons that have been reported to date have not been particularly threatening. The principal case of actual acts of terrorism consists of a limited effort to poison Israeli agricultural exports, direct attempts at poisoning such as lacing champagne with cyanide at a Russian military New Year's day celebration in Takjikistan in January 1995, and PKK attempts to poison Turkish water supplies with cyanide.( Such efforts make a sharp contrast to the massive national efforts Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Syria are making to acquire weapons of a mass destruction.

There is nothing admirable about Middle Eastern extremists of any persuasion, but an examination of the groups so far described in US reporting indicates that most are likely to set clear limits to their actions.(9) Regardless of how one may feel about Islamic extremists, secular terrorists, and radical governments like Iran and Libya, there is little evidence that any known group would easily turn to mass murder. While terrorists are often stereotyped as acting without moral limits and as willing martyrs, few actually conform with such stereotypes. Most "terrorists" are someone else's "freedom fighters" and operate within significant self or group-imposed constraints. Similarly, it is far from clear that most regional states are willing to take the kind of risks inherent in the scenarios postulated in Table Four.

At the same time, the steady escalation of car and truck bombings is a clear demonstration of the willingness to indulge in indiscriminate killing. The rhetoric and ideology of a number of terrorist movements like the Palestine Islamic Jihad and Combatant Partisans of God scarcely rules out mass murder. Most of the scenarios in Table Four are not all that complex, and only a few require large numbers of people and complex technical activity. The actions of Aum Shinrikyo illustrate the fact that it can be extremely difficult to characterize the level of extremism and capability for sophisticated action within a group until it has committed at least one action of terror. The cell structure used by the violent elements of most Middle Eastern extremist groups also tends to encourage the creation of compartmented groups with different and unpredictable commitments to violence while the loose and informal chain of contacts between extremist movements, known terrorist groups, and radical governments creates the possibly of random or unpredictable transfers of technology or weapons.

The institutionalization of state violence in the Middle East also creates a cumulative risk that opposition elements will be provoked into such forms of terrorism. The interactions between secular governmental repression and Islamic extremists, and the widespread repression of ethnic and religious groups create a climate which may lead to new forms of terrorism. Endemic conflicts like the Arab-Israeli struggle and Iranian-Iraqi search for hegemony in the Gulf are also breeding grounds for extremism in areas with growing technical sophistication.

Put differently, there are many possibilities and no clear probabilities. Table Four shows that there are many credible scenarios for the first regional "Dr. Ben No" or "Professor Abu Moriarity," but that there are no groups or nations that can be singled out. In fact, the cumulative probability of the first terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction being carried out by an unknown or unsuspected group is almost certainly higher than the cumulative probability it will be committed by some group already identified as a terrorist.

Quote
Terrorism and Biological Weapons

Biological weapons represent the most dangerous risk of a "paradigm shift" in Middle Eastern terrorism. They offer a far more devastating option than chemical weapons at costs far lower than those of both chemical and nuclear weapons. The costs of biological weapons are much smaller per casualty than those of any other form of terrorism. A UN report estimated in 1969 that military-scale biological weapons only cost $1 per square kilometer of coverage of a civilian target versus $600 for chemical weapons, $800 for nuclear, and $2,000 for advanced conventional weapons. While terrorists can scarcely expect similar production efficiencies and economies of scale, the savings would be roughly proportionate.(19)

Biological weapons do present the problem of uncertainty. They have never been used successfully in combat. At the same time, advances in commercial chemical and food processing equipment, and in biotechnology and medical equipment, are making it steadily easier and cheaper to produce effective weapons. Table Three shows that Middle Eastern states are steadily improving their capability to help proxies or conduct state terrorism, and the fact that at least some controls exist on chemical and nuclear technologies will tend to push terrorists towards biological weapons.

The technology of biological weapons also presents serious problems for detection and defense. One of the greatest problems in dealing with biological terrorism is that there is such a long list of possible weapons with so many different characteristics and effects. Table Seven illustrates this point by listing the biological weapons that might be used in the Middle East. It is clear from this table that a wide range of weapons exist, even though it only includes a selected list of traditional biological weapons and does not list any weapons which are contagious enough to create a self-sustaining epidemic.

Table Seven also does not portray the fact that biological weapons have radically different lethalities and area effects, and that the lethality of a weapon does not necessarily correspond to its area coverage. For example, if one assumes that a crop spraying helicopter, an RPV, or small aircraft released 50 kilograms of a Rift Valley Fever agent along a two kilometer line upwind of a city of around 500,000, the resulting agent would be heavy enough so that it would only reach about one kilometer downwind. It also would probably only kill 400, and incapacitate 35,000.

Consider, however, the following examples of area coverage and lethality using a wider range of weapons:

Agent                       Downwind Reach
                                 (kilometers)     Casualties
                                                        Dead     Incapacitated
Rift Valley Fever                1                  400        35,000
Tick-Borne Encephelistis     1                   9,500     35,000
Typhus                            5                 19,000     85,000
Brucellosis                       10                  500       100,000
Q Fever                           20+                150       125,000
Tularemia                       20+               30,000     125,000
Anthrax                          20++            95,000      125,000

Quote
In theory, a terrorist could credibly produce and use any of these weapons -- particularly if a state granted the terrorist group sanctuary, a secure facility, and/or state support. US studies and exercises have shown that the open literature and commercial equipment is adequate for such purposes -- particularly if the agent does not have to be stored in a stable form or weaponized.

The terrorist would also have the advantage that laboratory or pilot scale production of 50-500 liters of agent would be adequate for many types of terrorist attacks, and would involve far less detectable purchases of equipment and production efforts than commercial scale production of weapons using equipment with a capacity of over 500 liters. While there some guidelines of identifying dual-use biological equipment and related technology, there also are literally hundreds of suppliers scattered all over the world, and existing guidelines emphasize large scale or highly specialized equipment that terrorists either would not need or could buy with little fear of detection using different covers and suppliers.(21)

The need for a special facility would vary sharply according to the agent used. Anthrax and Botulin, for example, could be produced safely in a comparatively unsophisticated level 2 facility with only limited special containment equipment. A terrorist might also use a university or small company laboratory as a cover to produce a more pathogenic agent, or accept the risk of relatively low levels of protection against accident. Both approaches would be less detectable than the level 3 or level 4 production in a secure military facility that a government might insist upon.

A wide range of different fermentation equipment might be used, and standard commercial fermenters could be adapted for either batch or continuous fermentation. Anthrax, for example, might be produced on a one batch process from a commercial fermenter, and the facility might then be abandoned. Some of the largest fermenters are used for the production of microbial products for animal feeds. Controls are only beginning to be applied to the international sale of type cultures and most such controls offer little real security. A number of organisms can also be isolated from the environment in the Middle East, stolen or traded, or obtained in exchanges from a variety of laboratories other than type culture centers. The technology and equipment for genetic engineering is becoming commercially available, and a terrorist might lease such facilities in Europe or the US.(22)

A terrorist might also steal a virus from a government facility. Such facilities sometimes offer immediate access to very dangerous agents. For example, an Ebola virus incident occurred by accident in Reston Virginia in December 1989. Fortunately, the Ebola turned out to be a strain which was only fatal to monkeys. However, there is no guarantee that a targeted attack on a medical research facility would not give a terrorist access to a far more lethal weapon. Ebola outbreaks involving human beings have a history of 53% to 92% mortality, and there are at least five other viruses with similar lethality that might be stolen or cultured to produce a weapon.(23)

Once again, however, such potential threats must be placed in a real-world context. It must be stressed that are few cases where biological terrorist activity has been attempted, and none which make it possible to know whether a terrorist can actually achieve high lethalities. There are also significant technical difficulties in weaponizing biological agents to achieve high casualties. It is difficult for terrorists to develop dry agents that can be scattered in the air, kill through inhalation, and which have just the right size and weight to ensure both proper concentration and proper lethality. Effective weapons use droplets smaller than 10 microns, and the effectiveness of most weapons is measured in terms of the number of infectious units that can be released of 1-5 micron size. The production of lethal agents also usually requires a significant amount of equipment and time, although the processing equipment involved is becoming steadily cheaper. The only way to be certain of lethality is through experimentation with live subjects -- although this might be done with limited risk of detection by "mini-attacks" on selected individuals.

The question also arises as to how many people real-world terrorists are willing to kill with what risks. A terrorist or "freedom fighter" attacking a regime is unlikely to use biological agents that end up attacking an entire people. Terrorists willing to attack enemy military targets and regimes may be willing to kill some civilians but may not be willing to indulge in mass murder. At the same time, there are a number of key enclave targets in the Middle East.

Israel, for example, has expelled many of its Palestinian workers and regularly closes its borders. An attack on Tel Aviv and many of Israel's coastal cities might involve Israeli Arabs, but a terrorist might find this to be an acceptable price to pay. Similarly, isolated exercises and reserve mobilization areas might be targeted from well outside normal perimeter defenses. US military enclaves in Saudi Arabia are another example of such a target as are key forces securing the regime, like the Saudi National Guard. Key districts of a Middle Eastern city may form an enclave target like the royal residences and embassy quarter of Riyadh. Isolated Egyptian and Algerian military and security force casernes are other examples of such targets, as are foreign compounds, oil facilities, etc. So are ethnic and sectarian areas where the geographic divisions in the population are clear enough so that an attack could be containable. This might actually ease the problems terrorists face in deploying weapons with particles small enough to be efficient aerosols. A large particle with predictable limits to its area coverage might prove to be an advantage.

One thing is clear. If terrorists are successful in producing or obtaining a highly lethal biological agent, the payload involved could be so small that it would be easy to deliver much larger amounts than the 50 kilograms discussed in Table Seven, or to deliver a mix of agents with radically different effects and treatments and do so in a relatively small delivery system. Many agents listed would be equally effective if scattered from a ship, from a truck, or off the top of several tall buildings. The US Army, for example, has tested the scattering of Anthrax like particles from a ship off of Atlantic City, on commuters in Grand Central station, from the back of trains, and in a covert attack on Egland Air Base. All four simulated attacks were conducted without any questions or challenges, and gathering of particles from test subjects showed that they would have had high lethality.

Line source delivery does not require an aircraft or platform detectable by radar, and the urban sprawl of cities like Tel Aviv and Cairo now means that sufficient high rise buildings exist so that a terrorist could select three or four buildings, take a suitcase or trunk to the roof, release the agent an optimal distance from the main area of attack and leave. Alternatively, a wet agent and nebulizer/fogger could be moved to the roof disguised as cleaning equipment or some other service device. Further, security against this form of attack would not affect using a truck or vehicle in a more open area and no current detection device could prevent exposure. Even the new US Interim Biological Agent Detector (IBAD), for example, takes at least 45 minutes to detect and analyze an agent -- provided it is set to recognize the agent used. The first real field tests of this system are being funded in South Korea in 1997.(24)

Terrorists could also use much less ambitious forms of biological warfare. One American in Fairfax, Virginia, for example, exploited the fear of biological weapons by spraying liquid over his neighbors and telling them they had been infected with anthrax. While this case borders on the absurd, a terrorist could cause a great deal more fear by using an actual agent in non-lethal amounts or inserting detectable amounts of agents into a water system and making the action public. While most agents are ineffective once sent through water purification systems, this fact is not known to most physicians and the announcement could cause considerable disruption. Similarly, agricultural exports can be disrupted by contamination of food with toxins or pathogenic agents (this was done with Chilean grape exports to the US). Medical and other widely used consumer goods could also be tampered with in the target country (done with Tylenol in the US, and threatened against Pepsi Cola).(25)

In short, the problems of detection, defense, and response would be even more difficult than in dealing with chemical weapons and the risk of a breakdown or collapse of national emergency and medical services would be much greater. Effective surveillance of known potential facilities would be extremely difficult for all of the Middle Eastern states with modern research and food processing facilities, and tracking all relevant imports would be almost impossible. Detection and warning systems would be even more prone to false alarms, the use of "cocktails," and gaps in coverage. Even effective systems would at best provide medical and emergency response teams with warning of the protection methods they should use and the need for immediate treatment. As a result, more might depend on the willingness of the terrorist to kill than on a Middle Eastern government's effort to detect and defend.

PLEASE READ THE FULL REPORT HERE:
http://web.archive.org/web/19970708152302/www.csis.org/mideast/terror.html

[birther truther tenther]

http://web.archive.org/web/19970708140853/www.csis.org/mideast/

Overview
The Middle East remains a region in crisis. Several of the Arab states of North Africa are moving towards political and economic reform, but progress is slow and erratic. Algeria is now caught up in a major civil conflict. Libya's stability is deteriorating, and Islamic extremist elements challenge the stability of Tunisia. The Arab-Israeli peace process is proving anything but irreversible, and a continuing low level war is now taking place between Israeli forces and the Iranian/Syrian-backed Hezbollah. Lebanon remains an occupied state. Iraq remains under Saddam Hussein and is still a military threat to its neighbors, in spite of the Gulf War and six years of UN sanctions. Iran remains under the rule of an Islamic revolution that may still have ambitions for regional hegemony, which seeks to export its ideology, which is hostile to the US, and which opposes the Arab-Israeli peace process. The Southern Gulf lacks unity, and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia demonstrate that there are growing challenges in terms of internal security. Peripheral states -- such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Sudan Turkey, Yemen -- create further potential challenges to the stability of the region, while raising strategic and humanitarian concerns in their own right.

The CSIS Middle East Program, under the co-direction of Anthony H. Cordesman and Judith Kipper, addresses these challenges through a wide range of programs. It has developed broad net assessments of regional political, economic, demographic, water, energy, and security trends. These assessments are supported by detailed analyses of sub-regions like the Mahgreb, the Arab-Israeli "ring states," the Gulf, and the Red Sea area. They are also supported by analysis and briefings on individual problem areas, and studies of potential solutions to such security problems.

These studies strongly suggest that the true causes of instability in the region go far beyond a narrow focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the threats posed by Iran and Iraq, and the threat posed by various extremist groups. They suggest that the Middle East and North Africa face growing problems because of a failure to address the need for economic reform, to encourage the private sector, and attract and make effective use of foreign investment. They also suggest that the region is experiencing extraordinarily rapid population growth that is creating a potential crisis in sustaining increase per capita incomes and development. There is already a "youth explosion" in terms of large populations of unemployment workers under the age of 25, and a growing crisis in the quality and relevance of education. The program conducts on-going studies of military and security trends in the region. These include detailed assessments of the military balance, and have produced two major books: Perilous Prospects: The Arab-Israeli Military Balance and the Peace Process (Westview 1996), and The Gulf War: Lessons of Modern War, Volume IV. (Westview 1996). A four volume CSIS report has also been completed on the military balance in the Gulf, and detailed country studies are underway of the military forces of each Gulf country, Iranian and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and US forces in the Gulf. Assessments are also available of the military balances in the Mahgreb, the Arab-Israeli "ring states," and Red Sea areas.

The program works with other elements of CSIS to analyze energy trends and trade patterns in the region, and US strategic and commercial interests in the Middle East. It has produced analysis of the energy trends in the region through 2015, the impact of Middle Eastern oil and gas exports on world energy balances, energy risks, and the Asia's growing dependence on Middle Eastern energy exports.

In addition, the CSIS Middle East Program maintains programs to ensure a dialogue on many of these issues, through a series of meetings, briefings, and conferences. These include such activities as the International Consultative Group on the Middle East, and a series of high level meetings on key Middle East organized by Judith Kipper.

Projects
The main activities of the Middle East program include:

    * International Consultative Group on the Middle East. The International Consultative Group brings together a select group from the Middle East, the United States, and Europe (from the policy community, the business world, and academia) for a continuing dialogue. The ICG focuses on the fundamental trends—global and regional, economic, political, and security—confronting the Middle East. A meeting is planned for Washington, D.C., in June 1997. (Richard Fairbanks, Managing Director, Domestic and International Issues; Arnaud de Borchgrave, Senior Adviser; Anthony H. Cordesman and Judith Kipper, Codirectors, Middle East Studies Program)

    * Middle East: Dynamic Net Assessment. This project has produced a six-volume, comprehensive look at the strategic environment in the Middle East, which takes account of the most recent political and military developments in the region. This series of books has been copublished by CSIS and Westview Press includes: Iraq: Sanctions and Beyond; Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE: Challenges of Security; Kuwait: Recovery and Security After the Gulf War; Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment; Saudi Arabia: Guarding the Desert Kingdom; and U.S. Forces in the Middle East: Resources and Capabilities. It is available from the CSIS bookstore, from Westview Press by calling 1-800-456-1995, or at bookstores.

      The project is now exploring new options for Gulf cooperation and developing an economic, political, and strategic model of the possible future of the Gulf through the year 2020 in regional security, particularly the security of U.S. allies and of U.S. strategic interests. Other studies include the demographics and sources of ethnic and sectarian conflict, patterns in arms transfers, and the nuclear, chemical, and biological forces of Middle Eastern states. (Anthony H. Cordesman, Senior Fellow and Codirector, Middle East Studies Program)

    * The New Middle East: Long-Term Trends and Developments. This series of seminars, lectures, and working groups focuses on political, economic, and strategic developments in the region, in which Iran and Iraq are of particular importance. The implications for energy security, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the Western democracies' increasingly divergent policies toward Iran and Iraq are major areas of study, along with the Arab-Israeli peace process. Socioeconomic and political issues, which are often the true causes of instability, as well as economic restructuring and experiments in democratization are topics being examined in the light of new realities in the Middle East. (Anthony H. Cordesman and Judith Kipper, Codirectors, Middle East Studies Program) Middle East Program

Middle East Program Publications
Full Reports, Analyses, and Databases On-line

Note: These are large files, and may take some time to load

The United States, Japan, Europe and the Gulf

Terrorism and the Threat From Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East

The Quadrennial Defense Review: the American Threat to the United States

Books and Major Publications
The Middle East Studies Program has issued several books on developments in the Middle East. These are available through the CSIS bookstore, or directly from Westview.

Iraq: Sanctions and Beyond
Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed Hashim

This volume provides analysis of the state of Iraq's security and of current Western policy toward the country in the wake of the Gulf War. It also examines the political, economic, and security impact of sanctions, Iraq's future role as an oil exporter, the U.S. policy of dual containment in relation to Iraq, and options for dealing with Iraq in the future.

February, 1997; 400 pages;
Hardbound: 0-8133-3235-4, $78.00
Paperback: 0-8133-3236, $35.00

Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment
Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed Hashim

This volume provides a detailed analysis of Iran's politics, economics, energy exports, security and military forces, as well as an examination of current Western policy toward Iran and its regional activities and support of Islamic extremists. The impact of sanctions and the U.S. policy of dual containment are examined in detail along with different strategies for dealing with Iran and Iran's efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

January, 1997, 384 pages
Hardbound: 0-8133-3237-0, $75.00
Paperback: 0-8133-3238-9, $30.00

Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE: Challenges of Security
Anthony H. Cordesman

This volume examines the changing economic and internal security challenges faced by the Gulf countries and the problems they face with Iran, Iraq, and other Gulf states. The special military and security needs of Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are analyzed here in detail, as are their growing demographic problems and export plans.

February, 1997; 288 pages
Hardbound: 0-8133-3239-7, $75.00,
Paperback: 0-8133-3240-0, $30.00

Saudi Arabia: Guarding the Desert Kingdom
Anthony H. Cordesman

Since the Gulf War, Saudi Arabia's tenuous security situation has been altered by an ongoing U.S. presence. This volume provides detailed analysis of the state of the Saudi economy and military forces, its growing internal security problems and the stability of its regime, and its reliability as an energy exporter.

January, 1997; 256 pages
Hardbound: 0-8133-3241-9, $65.00,
Paperback: 0-8133-3242-7, $27.00

Kuwait: Recovery and Security After the Gulf War
Anthony H. Cordesman

With the thoroughness that this recently spotlighted nation requires, this volume examines Kuwait's internal and external security situation after the turbulent days of the Gulf War and investigates continued Western involvement in its safekeeping. It also examines Kuwait's changing role as an energy exporter.

February 1997; 144 pages
Hardbound: 0-8133-3243-5, $60.00,
Paperback: 0-8133-3244-3, $23.00

U.S. Forces in the Middle East: Resources and Capabilities
Anthony H. Cordesman

This volume provides the first detailed analysis of the trends in U.S. contingency capabilities since the end of the Gulf War, the impact of the Bush administration's "Base Force" policy, and the Clinton administration's bottom-up review of current U.S. contingency capabilities. It examines U.S. capabilities in the Gulf through the year 2001, the impact of current force improvement plans and defense budgets, and the new problems created by the need for counter-proliferation strategy.

January, 1997: 128 pages
Hardbound: 0-8133-3245-1, $62.00,
Paperback: 0-8133-3246-x, $24.00

Perilous Prospects: The Peace-Process and the Arab-Israeli Military Balance
Anthony H. Cordesman

This book provides a detailed analysis of the delicate and dangerous balance of power in the Middle East. It provides a comprehensive account of the military and security concerns arising out of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the recent assassination of Prime Minister Rabin. Cordesman considers a number of possible futures for the region, and their effects on the peace process, ranging the outbreak of a new Intifada, to war between Israel and Syria over the Golan Heights. It also provides an analysis of the internal security requirements of both Israel and a new Palestinian state, which are the key to any lasting settlement.

May, 1996: 336 pages
Hardbound: 0-8133-2939-6, $60.00,
Paperback: 0-8133-3074-2, $25.00

The Gulf War: Lessons of Modern War, Volume IV
Anthony H. Cordesman and Abraham R. Wagner

This new volume in the acclaimed: "Lessons of Modern War" series provides what must be considered the definitive study of the Gulf War. The authors draw careful conclusions based on extensive research from a wide variety of sources, including newly declassified documents, official military reports, interviews: field research in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and southern Iraq: and Anthony Cordesman's own firsthand observations of the unfolding battle.

The book examines in unprecedented detail the efforts of all members of the coalition, not just the United States. The authors are careful to distinguish between the general lessons about warfare that can be drawn from the Gulf War and those that are unique to this conflict. The many lessons presented in this book cover the whole range of political, strategic, tactical, technical, and human elements of this conflict.

The authors' analysis is based on the dynamic interaction of all these factors. The central lesson is that this highly complex web of human and technological developments has resulted in a new "military revolution" of profound significance for the history of modern war. The Gulf War explodes many myths and is essential reading for anyone concerned about the new, but still dangerous, world in which we live in.

February, 1996: 1048 pages
Hardbound: 0-8133-8601-2, $98.00.

REPORTS FOR SALE:
Please make your check payable in dollars to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All reports must be paid for in advance with postage.

April 9, 1997
"Stability and Instability in the Middle East: The Economic, Demographic, Energy and Security Situation in the Middle East" - Summary Briefing (Cost: $25.00)

April 8, 1997
"Investment and Economic Trends in the Middle East: A Comparative Macroeconomic Overview" (Cost: $25.00)

April 4, 1997
"Trends in US Defense Spending and Forces in the Gulf War: Tracking the Real Impact of the Clinton FY1998 Budget Request" (Cost: $25.00)

March 18, 1997
"Oil as a Blessing and a Curse: The Performance of Oil-Dominated Economies in the Middle East" (Cost: $15.00)

March 4, 1997
"The Quadrennial Defense Review, the American Threat to the United States" (Cost: $15.00)

March 4, 1997
"Iran and Weapons of Mass Destruction" (Cost: $25.00)

March 4, 1997
"The United States and the Threat of Middle Eastern 'Terrorism'" (Cost: $15.00)

March, 1997
"The United States, Japan, Europe and the Gulf: Meeting External Challenges" (Cost: $25.00)

March, 1997
"Beyond Dual Containment: The US, Japan, and the Gulf" (Cost: $15.00)

February 9, 1997
"Iraq and the 'War of the Sanctions', Volume IV Weapons of Mass Destruction and Delivery System" (Cost: $25.00)

February 9, 1997
"Iraq and the 'War of the Sanctions', Volume I, Domestic Politics and Internal Security" (Cost: $25.00)

February 9, 1997
"Iraq and the 'War of Sanctions', Volume II, Economics, Sanctions, Trade, Energy and Foreign Policy" (Cost: $25.00)

February 9, 1997
"Iraq and the 'War of Sanctions', Volume III, Conventional Military Forces, Paramilitary Forces, and Terrorism" (Cost: $25.00)

February 9, 1997
"The Military Balance in the Gulf: Volume I: Overview of Military Expenditures, Conventional Forces, and Weapons of Mass Destruction" (Cost: $25.00)

February 4, 1997
"The Changing Nature of Oil and Gas in the Middle East" (Cost: $25.00)

February, 1997
"The Water Problem in the Middle East and North Africa" (Cost: $25.00)

January 1, 1997
"The Military Balance in the Gulf: Volume IV, Southern Gulf and US Forces" (Cost: $25.00)

January 1, 1997
"The Military Balance in the Gulf: Volume III, Iran and Iraq: The Northern Gulf" (Cost: $25.00)

January 1, 1997
"The Military Balance in the Gulf: Volume II, Gulf Arms Transfers" (Cost: $25.00)

January, 1997
"Changing Patterns in the Military Balance in the Gulf, Red Sea, and South Asia" (Cost: $25.00)

December 12, 1996
"The Middle East and the Gulf: Meeting External Challenges" (Cost: $15.00)

December, 1996
"Trends in NATO and European Forces Since the Cold War" (Cost: $25.00)

December, 1996
"On the Edge: Trends in US Forces Since the Cold War" (Cost: $25.00)

November 14, 1996
"Foreign Strategic Challenges and the American Threat to the United States" (Cost: $25.00)

November 1, 1996
"Arab-Israeli Economic, Demographic, and Military Trends and the Peace Process" (Cost: $25.00)

October 22, 1996
"Terrorism and the Threat From Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East" (Cost: $25.00)

October, 1996
"Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers in the Gulf: Impact Relative to World and Regional Transfers, Regional Military Balance, Sales by Supplier Nation, Trends in Northern and Southern Gulf, and Impact on Gulf Economies" (Cost: $25.00)

September 12, 1996
"Iraq: Saddam, Sanctions and "Dual Containment": Oral Statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee" (Cost: $15.00)

September 2, 1996
"Asia and Dependence on Middle East Oil and Gas" (Cost: $25.00)

September, 1996
"Strategic Developments in the Maghreb: A Graphic Assessment" (Cost: $25.00)

August 28, 1996
"Iraq's Military Forces in the Year 2000: Trends and Uncertainties" (Cost: $25.00)

August 1, 1996
"US Strategic Interests in the Middle East and the Process of Regional Change" (Cost: $25.00)

July 31, 1996
"Major Trends in Asia: The Changing Nature of Strategic Interests in Asia" (Cost: $25.00)

July 8, 1996
"Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East: War Fighting and Arms Control Implications" (Cost: $15.00)


Center for Strategic and International Studies - 1997