Commissioners have been working behind the scenes to improve security measures for biological, nuclear WMD
Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) plan to introduce legislation to implement the recommendations of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Proliferation and Terrorism in September, retired Air Force Col. Randall Larsen, the commission's executive director, told HSToday.us.
Indeed, the WMD Commission has been working closely with Congress to track 49 specific recommendations made in 13 categories in its report, titled "World at Risk," which was published in December 2008. The commission has developed a matrix to track progress on the recommendations as made by Congress, the White House, and non-governmental organizations, Larsen revealed.
The commission's work with Congress on the prevention of biological and nuclear WMD threats has produced an intense focus on stopping an a terrorist attack using biological agents, Larsen stressed.
"In the legislation that Senators Lieberman and Collins will be introducing, there is very little mention of the nuclear issue because we have been dealing with it for so long," he described. "It's more an issue of execution by the executive branch for what needs to be done. On the other hand, the bio threat requires a lot of legislation and help. It's not as mature. We have not had the time to mature all of the things we are doing to address the bio threat as we have with the nuclear threat."
The first part of the proposal to implement the recommendations of the WMD Commission will deal with laboratory security, the colonel added. Back in July, the WMD Commission met with biological scientists and academics as well as congressional and executive staffers to explore issues related to the legislation.
"There are a lot of people in the scientific community are concerned that some draconian type of legislation could cause a lot of problems," Larsen acknowledged. "So the commission is trying to play the role of an honest broker between the people who are trying to write these new laws and the people who are going to have to live with them. We see that as an important mission."
The legislation will address improvements to safety in US laboratories, to keep workers at them from being sickened by biological agents, and security, to stop workers from removing materials from the laboratories.
"If the FBI is right, the most significant biological attack that America has ever seen came from a scientist working in one of our own Department of Defense laboratories," Larsen said of the 2001 Amerithrax attack alleged to have been engineered by scientist Bruce Ivins from a laboratory of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md.
Upcoming workshops
The WMD Commission will develop a report card on how well the United States is addressing biological and nuclear WMD threats in mid-January 2009 as its final act. It is developing that report card from the matrix it is using to track the 49 recommendations of its report, Larsen commented.
Before then, the commission will sponsor two major workshops. The first, on Oct. 6, will bring together about 150 stakeholders in the biosecurity and national security communities to examine issues such as the Biological Warfare Convention (BWC) and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540, which asked states to develop security measures to mitigate the threat of biological, chemical and nuclear terrorism.
The conference is co-sponsored by the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, formerly directed by Tara O'Toole--who has been nominated but not yet confirmed as the first undersecretary of Homeland Security for Science and Technology in the Obama administration.
"To a certain extent, when you do things on biosecurity, the usual suspects show up to all of these. We want to expand the net a little bit and bring in people who work in the field of national security but not necessarily focused just on the bio end of it. It's going to be an end-to-end look at the issue of biodefense in America," Larsen remarked.
"We would like to do the BWC and the 1540 and those things about lab security. But even if we get all of those right, the technology is changing at such a rapid pace that we are not going to be able to prevent a bioattack. So we must prevent a bioattack from becoming a Bio Katrina," he added.
The commission is planning to sponsor another workshop in November that should deal more with nuclear threats, Larsen said, but he was not able to provide many details on it yet.
"Two administrations--Bush and Obama--and three independent commissions that have looked at WMD have been in complete agreement on 12 issues, starting with nuclear weapons," he remarked.
Tactical activities
Meanwhile, former Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Jim Talent (R-Mo.), chairman and vice chairman respectively of the commission, have been spending a lot of time meeting with the National Security Council, congressional appropriators, and others who must hear their message on specific issues.
The commissioners have been pressing for more money in the fiscal 2010 budget (or future budgets) for the Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority (BARDA), an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that works on the development and purchase of the vaccines, drugs, therapies, and diagnostic tools to deal with public health medical emergencies. The Obama administration proposed $300 million in funding for BARDA in fiscal 2010, but the WMD Commission pressed for about $1.7 billion, Larsen said.
In addition, the commission moved to protect funds dedicated to Project BioShield, which encourages drug companies to produce vaccines and countermeasures for biological agents.
"At one time, there was talk of raiding that reserve fund to make H1N1 vaccine," Larsen reported. "We think it's very important to be making vaccine for H1N1 but not to raid this fund. Both Senators Graham and Talent wrote a lot of letters and made a lot of phone calls and now we believe that has been fenced off and protected."
To further the commission's goal to educate members of Congress and the executive branch about the WMD threat, it is producing a short video of perhaps 10 minutes in length to grab the attention of lawmakers and executives and educate them on nuclear and biological WMD, Larsen noted.
In September, Graham is working with Texas A&M University to produce a brochure for National Preparedness Month. The idea behind the brochure is to education US citizens on the right questions to ask in quizzing their local, state and federal officials on WMD preparedness.
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