Graham, Talent provide extensive written feedback on proposal

WMD commissioners Bob Graham and Jim Talent appeared before the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday to provide insights into the current global situation with respect to securing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), particularly biological agents.

The former senators also provided feedback on a proposal announced Tuesday by Reps. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) and Peter King (R-NY) to introduce a bill in the House that would implement recommendations they made as members of the congressionally mandated WMD Commission, which officially wrapped up its work in February.

The legislation--with an introduction expected within a few weeks--would mandate requirements to improve US capabilities in securing deadly pathogens as well as prepare for and respond to a WMD attack. The bill would serve as the companion to the WMD Prevention and Preparedness Act (S. 1649), introduced last September by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine).

Pascrell said in a statement Tuesday that the House WMD bill would implement the recommendations of the WMD Commission, presented in a report of December 2008 titled World at Risk.

"The 9/11 Commission provided Congress with recommendations designed to guard against future attacks--however, one area they did not address was how to respond to the threat of nuclear and biological weapons," Pascrell said.

"The intent of our bipartisan legislation is to provide a truly comprehensive approach to securing the nation against weapons of mass destruction by looking at all angles--prevention and deterrence; preparedness; detection; attribution; response and recovery. The WMD Commission has laid out our deficiencies quite starkly and now more than eight years after 9/11 is the time to act decisively to counter this great threat to the American people."

King warned that a failure to act would increase the likelihood of a terrorist WMD attack.

"Public reports from former intelligence community officials indicate that al-Qaeda is attempting to acquire or develop weapons of mass destruction. This should come as no surprise, nor should the fact that, if acquired, al-Qaeda intends to use them against Americans," King said in the Tuesday statement. "In fact, the WMD Commission offered the sobering finding that a WMD attack is 'likely' to occur somewhere in the world by 2013 and that the US margin of safety is shrinking."

Graham and Talent did not spend much time in the hearing discussing the proposed bill, focusing instead on global WMD conditions and congressional reform to consolidate homeland security matters.

But in written testimony, they submitted extensive feedback on a summary of the House WMD bill provided to them, although they did not receive the actual language of the bill.

First, the bill would require the director of national intelligence (DNI) to produce a National Intelligence Strategy for Countering WMDs. The DNI presently is developing a 2010 National Intelligence Strategy for Countering Biological Threats.

"Based on a recently completed tour of nations in two of the most vulnerable regions, there are significant gaps in our intelligence relating the nation state--terrorist links. Recognizing the inherent difficulty of collecting intelligence in these venues, doing so should be the highest priority of American intelligence," the WMD commissioners wrote, endorsing the requirement.

The production of the report should further spur investments in the national security workforce to train and hire more WMD experts, as recommended in the World at Risk report, they added.

Moreover, intelligence fusion centers should include public health personnel to protect the public and prepare for WMD attacks, Graham and Talent said. The bill does not address that need.

The commissioners also approved of a proposal in the bill for more public preparedness for dealing with a WMD disaster. The WMD Commission's final product was a brochure on community preparedness for WMD threats.

"We support the bill's provisions for the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] to put forward threat bulletins and guidance to local governments and crafting important messages ahead of a crisis," Graham and Talent said. "We recommend that the public be involved in the creation and approval of threat information and alerts. This will help to ensure that these alerts effectively reach and motivate their target audience."

Like the Senate bill, the House bill would compel standards to secure US high-containment laboratories, which hold deadly pathogens. The commissioners endorsed reserving the most stringent security measures for the labs that contain the deadliest of those pathogens.

Currently, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) oversees human pathogens while the Department of Agriculture oversees plant and animal pathogens. The bill should consolidate management of pathogen oversight in HHS, which has the scientific know-how to secure the WMD agents, the WMD commissioners said. By contrast, the House bill would place security responsibilities with DHS.

"HHS has been doing a positive service in this area, and we do not want to change ships in midstream," they wrote.

The bill also would require HHS to develop a National Medical Countermeasure Dispensing Strategy. While this is necessary, the bill should support an entire chain of actions required to respond to a biological attack--including rapid detection and analysis of the threat, delivering threat information to the public, stocking supplies of medical countermeasures, distributing the countermeasures, treating those sickened by a WMD attack, protecting the well from WMD exposure, and cleaning up the environment.

Graham and Talent particularly emphasized the need for more spending on medical countermeasures in both their oral and written testimony. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA) would receive $476 million in the fiscal 2011 budget proposal for HHS, but a study by the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center determined BARDA should receive about $3.4 billion annually for five years to produce enough medical countermeasures for the top eight pathogens.

"It now falls to the US government to fund the development of medical countermeasures based upon the level of risk that is deemed tolerable," the commissioners wrote "An amount of $1.7 billion per year would meet roughly half the estimated need to provide a significant and necessary down-payment on the nation's preparedness. Given the threat, $1.7 billion per year for prevention and consequence management is a reasonable and comparatively sound investment."

Finally, the bill would call on the Secretary of State to promote membership in and adherence to the guidelines of the Biological Weapons Convention. Graham and Talent reiterated their calls for a new action plan for participation in the convention, which holds a regular conference every five years. The next one is this year.

Although the WMD Commission closed its doors on Feb. 26, Graham and Talent continue to pursue the commission's work as part of the Bipartisan WMD Terrorism Research Center, a nonprofit organization.