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CHAIRMAN LINDER HOLDS HEARING ON BIOSCIENCE AND THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
November 3, 2005
On Thursday, November 3, Congressman John Linder (R-GA), Chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack, held a hearing on “BioScience and the Intelligence Community.” The hearing examined how the Intelligence Community (IC) is utilizing bio-science experts to identify, prepare for, and mitigate bioterrorism risks.
“In 2001, America was awakened to the reality of bioterrorism when five individuals died across the country as a result of a still-unsolved terrorist attack involving anthrax,” Linder said. “In addition to those tragic deaths, seventeen others developed anthrax infections, thousands were placed on a regiment of Cipro, and a number of businesses, as well as the House and Senate Office Buildings, were closed for months for decontamination. Our experience in 2001 was a wake up call. Prior to 2001, the U.S. saw the threat of biological weapons in largely strategic or military terms. At that time, no one seriously believed that this country would fall victim to a biological event due to the fear of nuclear retaliation. Our thinking, as we have since discovered, was 100 percent wrong.”
In previous years, there was little belief that terrorists actually possessed the technical expertise to develop and deploy biological weapons. The collapse of the Soviet Union with its large stockpiles of poorly secured biological weapons, and the attacks of September 11th and the mailing of anthrax spores a few weeks later, however, resulted in a change in U.S. threat calculus, triggering a significant increase in biodefense efforts. These activities have led to the recognition that the IC has limited expertise in the science and technological elements of bioweapons. The debate regarding terrorists’ abilities to use openly published scientific research to develop or improve biological weapons has also been revived and the academic community has been called upon to weigh in on these and other bioterrorism issues.
The IC has the primary responsibility for monitoring the bioterrorist threat and thereby enabling prevention. The academic and research communities of the life sciences possess the knowledge necessary to guide intelligence collection, evaluate the information gathered, and assess its impact. These two communities must be intimately engaged if U.S. security interests are to be served. In the past, interaction between the IC and the biosciences has been limited – in part due to the fact that the U.S. has not had an offensive biological weapons capability and consequently there have been few experts for the IC to call upon when needed. To the extent the academic community has been solicited by the IC for its expertise, efforts have been rather ad hoc, often relying on unpaid professionals and volunteers.
Recommendations, such as those included in a report from the Silberman/Robb Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction in March 2005, have been made to address these problems and achieve greater engagement of the scientific community by national security professionals. Focused recruiting of scientists to work in the IC, establishment of paid advisory groups comprised of practicing bio-researchers, and voluntary guidelines for publishing of relevant bioscience research have all been proposed.
“As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack, I can tell you that overseeing our efforts to prevent a nuclear event are relatively easy compared to the biological side,” Linder continued. “Nuclear scientists, Federal agencies, the intelligence community, and relevant international players all regularly talk with each other about nuclear security. We need a similar system for biological pathogens and technology, and we need it now. We cannot fail in our responsibility to nearly 300 million Americans of ensuring that dangerous organisms never fall into the hands of those who would release them on an unsuspecting and ill-prepared public.”
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