U.S. faces real chemical/biological risk - experts
RTw 18.11.98 00:16
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By Andrew Quinn
STANFORD, Calif., Nov. 17 (Reuters) - A Princeton biophysicist
calls it "a living nightmare." A top CIA official says
it is now "a real and present danger."
U.S. policy-makers now say that the threat of biological or
chemical attack against a major American city is a reality that
must be taken into account -- especially with the rise of
extremist political and religious groups.
That dire message is being sounded this week at Stanford
University, where senior U.S. officials, academics and security
analysts, as well as a former secretary of state, are meeting to
debate the rising risk that biological and chemical warfare poses
to the public.
"We see the virtual disappearance of any sort of world
security system based on responsibility," former U.S.
Secretary of State George Shultz said, adding, "There are
people around, with power, who are perfectly willing to use these
weapons."
The conference at Stanford's Hoover Institution on War,
Revolution and Peace sought to improve intelligence-sharing on
developments in biological and chemical weaponry and on ways to
prevent its use.
Across the board, however, the message was the same: There is a
real possibility of massive civilian casualties in the near
future caused by a superplague, a new lethal gas or even a
sprinkling of genetic "time bombs" that no one has yet
figured out how to stop.
"Our fear is not that someday, somewhere an attack will
succeed and the intelligence community will be blamed," said
John Gannon, the director of the National Intelligence Council
and the top CIA official in charge of analysis.
"Our fear is that people will die -- a lot of people."
There have been sparks of interest in chemical and biological
weapons after the Aum Shinrikyo group's sarin gas attack in the
Tokyo subway in 1995 and Iraq's threat to send missiles bearing
anthrax bacteria against Israel and Saudi Arabia during the Gulf
War in 1991. But experts say these incidents are sideshows
compared with threats forecast for the next several years.
Rapid developments, especially in genetic engineering and
chemistry, mean that arsenals of mass destruction are growing in
both sophistication and number, the experts said.
"(The danger) is every bit as bad as it was for the nuclear
threat, only worse," said biophysicist Steven Block of
Princeton University, one of the JASON group of scientists that
advises the U.S. government on security concerns.
The existence of extremely powerful and cheap biological and
chemical weapons constitutes "a living nightmare,"
Block said.
On the biological front, experts predict the development of
so-called binary weapons that combine two harmless viruses to
build a killer bug, as well as genetically engineered plagues and
genetic time bombs that could effectively plant the seed of
self-destruction deep inside the human body.
Michael Moodie of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control
Institute said the threat of chemical attack was spurred by
factors outside the laboratory -- the spread of technical
expertise around the world and the problem of dual use, meaning
the possibility that the same factory can be converted from
making, for example, pharmaceuticals to turning out chemical
arms.
"Chemical weapons are the least glamorous of weapons of mass
destruction, but they are the most used," Moodie said,
noting that at least 24 countries were now believed to be
developing chemical weapons such as advanced nerve gas.
Many experts at Stanford said the chief threat in coming years
came not from what are known as rogue states but from splinter
political and religious groups increasingly able to develop
potentially devastating home-made weapons.
The only real "bioterrorism" incident in U.S. history
occurred in 1984, when the Rajneeshee group sprayed salmonella
bacteria on 10 Oregon salad bars in an effort to keep local
voters out of the polls. While 751 people fell ill, no one died.
But with the rapid spread of millenarian or violently
anti-government groups at home, the probability of fresh attempts
to use "the poor man's nuclear weapon" is on the rise,
according to Dean Wilkening of Stanford's Centre for
International Security and Cooperation.
"There's some evidence this may be a growing trend,"
Wilkening said. "These groups may unleash amazingly
destructive attacks."