CURRENT AND FUTURE WEAPONS OF

MASS DESTRUCTION (WMD) PROLIFERATION THREATS

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2001

U.S. SENATE,

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, PROLIFERATION,
AND FEDERAL SERVICES SUBCOMMITTEE,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:33 p.m., in room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel Akaka, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.

Present: Senators Akaka, Cleland, Carper, Cochran, Stevens, and Thompson.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA Senator AKAKA. The Subcommittee will please come to order. I welcome my friend, Senator Cleland, and our first panel.

Today's hearing about export controls and weapons of mass destruction is not a new topic for this Subcommittee. Senator Cochran, our distinguished Ranking Member and good friend, also held hearings on export controls when he chaired this Subcommittee. It is not a partisan issue. I think it is fair to say that our witnesses today, who are all noted experts on the subject of proliferation and export controls, reflect the bipartisan nature of this discussion.

Since September 11, however, developing an effective approach to controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction to both state and non-state actors has taken a new urgency. The terrorists of the 21st Century are not intent on using one bullet to assassinate political leaders, as did the lone Serbian nationals who triggered the First World War at the beginning of the last century with the shooting of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Twenty-first Century terrorists strive to cause the maximum amount of damage to the maximum number of innocent people. Their weapons of choice are amazingly simple and astoundingly deadly. But they are still the few against the many.

As one of our witnesses today notes, contemporary terrorists have a mystical fascination with chemical, biological, and radiological weapons. Osama bin Laden and his followers would use these weapons to harm us all without regard to age, gender, or nationality. Men, women, and children from over 50 nations died on September 11. We cannot forget this fact as we prepare for future

conflicts during the rest of this century, which has begun as sadly as the last.

The technology that has made us rich, however, also threatens to be the technology that destroys us. High-speed computers, Internet access, dual-use materials, equipment, and know how are essential ingredients of these simple but deadly devices. Unfortunately, we know from sad experience with the recent anthrax attacks that these threats are real.

Our hearing is about how we can prevent more laboratories with dangerous weapons capabilities from being developed. Some might argue that it is too late. Technology is loose. Dual-use items are too difficult to control, or trying to control dual-use exports will only hinder our own economy.

I do not think we have the luxury of indulging in any of those arguments anymore. Our enemies are using our own technology and our own open society against us.

We cannot declare war against international terrorism while saying at the same time that we should conduct business as usual. There is no more time for business as usual. We need to examine every aspect of our society to see how we can harden ourselves against terrorist attack and we need to examine every aspect of our international transactions to see how we can inhibit our enemies from gaining technologies to use against us.

In World War II, export controls were not "dirty words." They were an essential part of our defense. In today's war, there is also a role for export controls because if we do not do everything we can do to deter our enemies from gaining deadly weapons, then we all will pay the ultimate price in our own backyards. This is the terrible message from today's terrorists.

This hearing is an effort to start identifying those technologies and the means to prevent them from hurting us later.

I am pleased to welcome my colleague, Senator Cleland, and ask him for an opening statement.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CLELAND

Senator CLELAND. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and members of our panel, thank you for coming. I am pleased that this Subcommittee is addressing this critical issue today and that we are further scheduled to address the Nonproliferation Assistance Coordination Act next week.

I note that a dear friend of mine, former Senator Sam Nunn, in his recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee called once again for enhancing the cooperative threat reduction measures that he helped put in place several years ago. I strongly support such action. There is no more important topic for our national security than addressing the threat posed by proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. I have long advocated a comprehensive national strategy for dealing with this threat and I believe that our strategy must be based on the likelihood of each type of incident as well as on our vulnerability to it.

For many years, I have argued that we were too focused on low probability, high-tech threats and not focused enough on high prob

that we must enhance the mechanisms for coordinating our response to WMD.

Coordination is essential. It is my conviction that we must better coordinate the efforts of all players that led me to develop legislation I am introducing today, the Public Health Emergencies Accountability Act. This act puts in place a procedure that allows clear assignment of responsibility in cases where the public health is threatened. It further mandates the exchange of information between institutions primarily responsible for public health, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and those primarily responsible for countering criminal and terrorist activities. We must also resource these agencies to enable them to carry out this essential coordination. Coordination is particularly important in the tough areas where the lines of responsibility and definition blur.

This hearing addresses another such arena, the dual-use technologies that lie at the heart of chemical, biological, even nuclear infrastructures that exist around the world today. To achieve the necessary coordination, we must tackle the hard questions that arise when talking about technologies that provide legitimate commercial opportunities, but which in the wrong hands can also mask potential threats.

It is no longer enough to throw up our hands and walk away from the table when the establishment and enforcement of necessary counterproliferation protocols conflicts with legitimate_commercial interests. We have got to find a way to strike a balance that allows commercial enterprises a reasonable degree of autonomy while ensuring the greater public good is not compromised. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you for your statement, Senator. Senator Stevens.

Senator STEVENS. I have no statement, Senator. I wish I could stay longer. I am just here for a little while. Thank you very much. Senator AKAKA. Thank you for being here.

We are glad to have our panel this morning. I am pleased to welcome you. Dr. Moodie is co-founder and President of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute and former Assistant Director for Multilateral Affairs of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Dr. Jonathan Tucker is Director of the Chemical and Biological Nonproliferation Program and was a member of the biological weapons inspection team in Baghdad, Iraq, with the United Nations Special Commission.

Ms. Rose Gottemoeller is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She holds a joint appointment, the Russian and Eurasian program and global policy program, and is former Deputy Under Secretary for Defense, Nuclear Nonproliferation, in the U.S. Department of Energy and former Assistant Secretary for Nonproliferation and National Security.

I would like to at this time, before I call on Dr. Moodie, to yield to Senator Thompson for any statement he may have.

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do not have any statement to give. I am looking forward to hearing the testimony

of hearings that this Committee and Subcommittee has had for a long time on this subject, and, of course, it is much more timely now in a lot of people's minds than it has been in times past, but I commend you for keeping the spotlight on this important area. Hopefully, people will now pay attention. Thank you.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much.

Dr. Moodie, we welcome any opening statement you may have.

TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL L. MOODIE,1 PRESIDENT, CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL ARMS CONTROL INSTITUTE

Mr. MOODIE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before the Subcommittee as it addresses this very important topic.

In the summary of my statement, in the few minutes that I have, I would like briefly to address three interrelated issues, the need for better threat assessments, the linkage between state and nonstate threats, and the need for a strategic response in which export controls continue to play an important role. My remarks today will focus on the chemical and especially the biological weapons threats. My starting point is the recommendation of the Gilmore Commission that we must improve our threat assessments. This is true not only with respect to the chemical and biological terrorism threat, but also for the challenge of proliferation at the state level. Traditionally, threat assessments have been overly simplistic. They have tended to focus on only a single factor, such as the agent that might be used or the motivations of the state or terrorist who might use them. In addition, these more simple threat assessments have emphasized vulnerabilities rather than genuine risks, which are a combination of vulnerability and likelihood.

But conducting more complex threat assessments is not easy. It demands good intelligence and creative analysis. But better threat assessments would do three things. First, they would describe a threat envelope that identifies the most plausible contingencies.

Second, they would provide a means to identify those contingencies that require hedging in that due to the severity of their consequences, some preparation for them should be undertaken even if they are relatively unlikely, and this combination of a plausible threat envelope and the hedging contingencies should give to policy makers some measure for making decisions regarding policy priorities and resource allocations.

Third, a good threat assessment will highlight the fact that the threat is not uni-dimensional, rather that it is composed of several elements, including the actor, his motivations, intentions regarding casualties and capabilities, the agent involved, the target, and issues regarding the mode of attack and other operational considerations.

The key to a successful threat assessment is disaggregating the threat into these component elements and assessing the possibilities that various combinations of them produce. Some combinations of factors will yield significant consequences, others will produce no consequences at all.