20 November 1998
(John C. Gannon says weapons threat is real and growing) (5350) Washington -- "Today we recognize that biological and chemical weapons are not just a wartime concern, but a clear and present danger for us at home and abroad," according to John C. Gannon, Chairman of CIA's National Intelligence Council. In remarks November 16 to the Hoover Institution's Conference on Biological and Chemical Weapons at Stanford University, Gannon noted that "America's prestige and high profile as a global power make us the world's biggest and most dispersed target. Think about it: our deployed military, our embassies abroad, our international commercial interests, and, yes, even our home towns." There are four key points ... to the threat as we see it, Gannon said: -- First: the BCW threat is real and growing. -- Secondly: the number of potential perpetrators is increasing, particularly non-state actors. -- Thirdly: agents of increasing lethality are being developed that have the potential to cause massive casualties. -- And, finally, the Intelligence Community alone cannot eliminate this threat, nor can any other single institution or sector. Defeating the BCW threat will take a concerted, collaborative, and integrated approach across national and regional governments, law enforcement, the military, the private sector, the world of medicine, the academic and scientific communities and the media. "More than a dozen states, including several that are hostile to Western democracies -- Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria -- now either possess or are actively pursuing offensive CW and/or BW capabilities for use against their perceived enemies, whether internal or external," Gannon said. He pointed in particular to Iraq, which "in the 1980s, used chemical weapons against its own Kurdish population and against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. The BW program that Iraq initiated in 1985 rapidly escalated to production and weaponization, constituting a potential threat to allied forces during the Gulf War," he said. Gannon also noted that "after four-and-one-half years of claiming that it had conducted only "defensive research" on biological weapons, Iraq finally admitted in 1995 that it had produced a half million liters of refined and unrefined BW agents such as anthrax. But, of course, UNSCOM believes that Iraq produced substantially greater amounts -- three to four times greater." Terrorist Osama bin Laden and his network "also have shown a strong interest in chemical weapons," Gannon said. "We know that bin Laden's organization has attempted to develop poisonous gases that could be fired at U.S. troops in the Gulf states. The discovery of the VX precursor EMPTA at a factory in Sudan that had known ties to bin Laden indicates how close he may have been to achieving his goal. "We found solid evidence of chemical weapons (CW) activity at Shifa in Khartoum," he said, noting that sophisticated tests were done on soil samples and they revealed the presence of EMPTA, a key precursor for the nerve agent VX. Following is the text of Gannon's remarks: (Begin Text) Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for the warm introduction.®MDBO¯®MDNM¯ I am honored to be among such distinguished participants in this important conference on biological and chemical weapons. Sid Drell and Abe Sofaer have done a remarkable job in organizing this rich two-and-a-half day agenda. Congratulations, Sid and Abe. Let me begin by proving a negative: I am not George Tenet, whom you invited and, I know, devoutly hoped would be here. Being the eleventh-hour substitute for such a dynamic boss is a high-risk business. On the plane last night, I was haunted by the recollection of a sixteenth-century Ottoman emissary to a Balkan state who dutifully stood in for his master, who stood terrified and helpless as his unruly audience turned ugly, and who got sent home unceremoniously after impaling. I thank God that we live in a more forgiving culture...I hope! Director Tenet wanted to be here because he believes, with Abe and Sid and many of you, that the United States faces a disturbing and growing challenge from chemical and biological weapons. The fact that George could not be here, thanks to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, only strengthens the argument about the seriousness of the BCW threat. The DCI applauds the work of this conference and regrets that he cannot be here to tell you this in person. The Intelligence Community is working hard against the BCW target. I have seen this first hand as John Deutch's Deputy Director for Intelligence, which office has administrative responsibility for the DCI's Non-Proliferation Center, and now as George Tenet's Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which has senior experts helping to guide Community intelligence production on proliferation. This is, and must be, a collaborative effort drawing together knowledge and expertise from inside and outside the U.S. Government. I want to recognize three individuals among us tonight who have played critical roles in building the Intelligence Community's BCW program. First, John Lauder, a valued colleague and friend of mine for many years, is the current chief of NPC. John, who chaired a panel this afternoon, is an extraordinarily able, agile, and unflappable leader -- a sort of one-man confidence-building measure -- who is making a big, positive difference today. John, please stand and be recognized. Gordon Oehler, John's predecessor as NPC chief, broke paths on proliferation at CIA and in the larger Community for a generation, as a topnotch analyst admired for the rigor of his work, as an accomplished National Intelligence Officer, as the Director of CIA's Officer of Scientific and Weapons Research, and as the widely respected head of NPC. Gordon, history will note, developed NPC's strategic plan, which showed a far-flung Community how to conceptualize the complex proliferation problem and how, in a practical way, to mobilize against it. I was blessed to work with Gordon when I was Deputy Director for Intelligence. No finer mind or better man has come CIA's way. And thirdly, you all are familiar with Sid Drell as a brilliant theoretical physicist whose impressive academic career parallels a nearly forty-year run as a much respected technical adviser to the U.S. Government on national security and defense issues. I also know Sid as a particularly productive member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) and the Non-Proliferation Panel. In these capacities, Sid has been more of a determined coach than a professor, prodding us relentlessly to improve our performance on proliferation. Thanks, Sid. We owe you. The organizers of this conference rightly point out that throughout the Cold War, while world leaders were preoccupied with the threat of a nuclear holocaust, more and more nations, largely unnoticed, were acquiring the ability to produce chemical and biological weapons. George Shultz was among the few statesmen who recognized the threat. No one argued more tenaciously and eloquently than he did for the adoption of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Indeed, one of his final acts as Secretary of State was to address the Chemical Weapons Conference in Paris in January, 1989, where he challenged the international community to adopt the CW Convention. The Secretary asked: "Must it take a fresh shock of human tragedy -- must more places like Flanders Fields find their place in the history books through the particular ghastliness of their destruction before governments work together to restore respect for the international norms against chemical weapons use?" Today we recognize that biological and chemical weapons are not just a wartime concern, but a clear and present danger for us at home and abroad. America's prestige and high profile as a global power make us the world's biggest and most dispersed target. Think about it: our deployed military, our embassies abroad, our international commercial interests, and, yes, even our home towns. THE THREAT AS WE SEE IT: There are four key points, and one corollary, in all that I will say here tonight. First: the BCW threat is real and growing. Secondly: the number of potential perpetrators is increasing, particularly non-state actors. Thirdly: agents of increasing lethality are being developed that have the potential to cause massive casualties. And, finally, the Intelligence Community alone cannot eliminate this threat, nor can any other single institution or sector. Defeating the BCW threat will take a concerted, collaborative, and integrated approach across national and regional governments, law enforcement, the military, the private sector, the world of medicine, the academic and scientific communities and the media. And the corollary: This conference, I believe, takes us in the right direction by educating all of us to the grave BCW challenges we face and to the need to combine resources to deal with it effectively. The development, possession and use of these abhorrent weapons are banned by domestic law and international treaty. The United States and other concerned governments are working hard to slow proliferation. Nonetheless, the number of players possessing or acquiring biological or chemical weapons clandestinely is substantial and mounting. More than a dozen states, including several that are hostile to Western democracies -- Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria -- now either possess or are actively pursuing offensive CW and/or BW capabilities for use against their perceived enemies, whether internal or external. Many of these countries are pursuing an asymmetric warfare capability and see chemical and biological weapons as the best means to counter overwhelming U.S. conventional military superiority. Several states are also pursuing BCW programs for counterinsurgency use and tactical applications in regional conflicts, increasing the probability that such conflicts will be deadly and destabilizing. In the 1980s, Iraq used chemical weapons against its own Kurdish population and against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. The BW program that Iraq initiated in 1985 rapidly escalated to production and weaponization, constituting a potential threat to allied forces during the Gulf War. As the Iraq case so dramatically demonstrates, even a residual state BCW capability can be highly dangerous. After four-and-one-half years of claiming that it had conducted only "defensive research" on biological weapons, Iraq finally admitted in 1995 that it had produced a half million liters of refined and unrefined BW agents such as anthrax. But, of course, UNSCOM believes that Iraq produced substantially greater amounts -- three to four times greater. On the CW side, UNSCOM's recent discovery of VX in Iraqi warheads shows that for seven years the Iraqi's have been lying to the international community when they repeatedly said they had never weaponized VX. Beyond state actors, the number of terrorist groups seeking to develop or acquire CBW capabilities is proliferating. And many such groups, like Usama bin Ladin's, have international networks. That adds to uncertainty and the danger of a surprise attack. The constraints on non-state actors, of course, are much less than on state-sponsored programs. The casualty figures of the Aum Shinrikyo attack in Tokyo three and a half years ago could have been much higher if the group had not used a combination of impure sarin agent and inefficient delivery systems. As it was, 12 people were killed and more than 5-thousand needed medical treatment. Usama bin Ladin and his network also have shown a strong interest in chemical weapons. We know that bin Ladin's organization has attempted to develop poisonous gases that could be fired at U.S. troops in the Gulf states. The discovery of the VX precursor EMPTA at a factory in Sudan that had known ties to bin Ladin indicates how close he may have been to achieving his goal. Adding more unpredictability are the "lone militants" or the ad hoe groups here at home and abroad, (and there are plenty of them) who may try to conduct a BCW attack. Take the Ramzi Yousef case. There are indications that Yousef was planning to use cyanide in the World Trade Center bombing and that he had planned to use CW agents on other occasions. And with `how-to' guides like the "Anarchist's Cookbook" available commercially or on the Internet, loners can easily design and build their own weapons. To add to the threat, a growing number of bad actors can choose from a widening array of new agents and new delivery systems. BCW agents, as many of you know, are becoming more sophisticated and more effective. Rapid advances in biotechnology will yield new toxins or live agents, such as exotic animal viruses, that will require new detection methods and vaccines as well as other preventative measures. We are also concerned that some states might acquire more advanced and effective CW agents, such as Russia's fourth-generation "Novichok" agents, which are more deadly and more persistent. Gains in genetic engineering and "designer drug"-type CW agents are making it increasingly difficult for us to recognize all the agents threatening us. Meanwhile, advances are occurring in dissemination techniques, delivery options and strategies for use. We are worried that several countries of concern will weaponize BCW warheads for ballistic missiles. We see other qualitative changes that present growing challenges to our detection and deterrence efforts. Some countries are developing indigenous programs. That limits our interdiction opportunities. Iran is a case-in-point. Tehran -- drive, in part, by stringent international export controls -- has set about acquiring the capability to produce domestically the raw materials and equipment needed to support BCW agent production. Denial and deception techniques, meanwhile, are becoming more effective in concealing and protecting BCW programs Concealment is simpler with BW than with CW because there is more overlap between legitimate research and commercial biotechnology. That said, in both cases supposedly "legitimate" facilities can readily conduct clandestine BCW research and can convert rapidly to BCW production. Two other phenomena complicate the problem. First, scientists with transferable know-how continue to leave the former Soviet Union, some with undesirable destinations. And, secondly, the struggle to control dual-use technologies only gets harder, with smaller forces ready to transform opportunities for human betterment into threats of human destruction. Russia's current economic woes, of course, could exacerbate the "brain drain" problem. By importing talent and buying technology, state and non-state actors can make dramatic leaps forward in all the areas I just mentioned -- the development of new agents and delivery systems, a much earlier achievement of indigenous capabilities, and more sophisticated denial and deception techniques. In short, bad actors can purchase the invaluable advantage of "technological surprise." Regarding the dual-use problem: The same technology that is used for good today, can, if it falls into the wrong hands, be used for evil tomorrow. The overlap between BW agents and vaccines and between nerve agents and pesticides is, as you know, considerable. The technologies used to prolong our lives and improve our standard of living can quite easily be used to cause mass casualties. In the biological field especially, the security community and the public probably do not fully appreciate how widely available BW technology is -- in part, because all societies have a legitimate need and use for it. Intelligence is all about ascertaining the capabilities -- and even more important -- the intentions of one's adversaries. But getting at "intent" is the hardest thing to do -- getting inside Kim Jung II's or Saddam's or bin Ladin's head, if you will. What a chilling thought! Dual-use goes to the very crux of the "intent" challenge. WHAT U.S. INTELLIGENCE DOES TO COUNTER THE BCW THREAT: Let me now describe some of what U.S. Intelligence is doing to counter the BCW threat, in addition to seeking closer collaboration with many of you. The U.S. Intelligence Community's efforts to counter the BCW threat are, speaking broadly, comprised of three interrelated elements -- One: Assessment and Warning. Two: Deterrence, Disruption and Protection. Three: Monitoring Arms Control Regimes. The ultimate objective of our Intelligence Mission is to same American lives and protect America's vital interests. The Intelligence Community's greatest responsibility is to warn the President and other decision-makers and our war- fighters, so that they can make timely and effective decisions. For example, the National Intelligence Council, which I am privileged to lead, recently published a National Intelligence Estimate on World-Wide CW Programs and is currently working on an assessment to Global BW programs. Secondly, we intensively focus our intelligence assets -- both human and technical -- on deterring and disrupting the activities of actors who possess, or seek to develop or acquire key components needed for CW and BW. Our efforts set back Libya's CW programs about ten years by focussing international attention on the Rabta and Tarhunah facilities and by preventing Libya from obtaining needed chemicals, equipment and experts. Now, 13 years later, Libya, after spending a great deal of money, has only a small amount of agent and two facilities it dares not use for their intended purpose. If Qadahafi had been left undisturbed, he could by now have had thousands of tons of a variety of chemical agents and the ability to produce much more at will. We are justifiably proud of this achievement, but we recognize all too well that a tactical success does not lessen the strategic BCW threat we face. The Intelligence Community also provides the information required for DoD and the military to protect our forces from the effects of enemy use of CBW agents. We provide intelligence on evolving chemical and biological agents, their means of delivery and expected effects. And, thirdly, we have provided policymakers with evidence that parties might be engaged in prohibited activities under various international control regimes, including the Australia Group export control regime, and the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions. Moreover, our intelligence input has helped negotiators draft tighter and more verifiable agreements. WHAT ABOUT TOMORROW? Consider our warning challenge. America is no longer an insular nation protected by two large oceans. The battlefield of the future could be Main Street, USA. Our enemies -- be they states launching BCW-tipped missiles or terrorists concealing small vials of virus -- can bring the BCW threat to our own shores and heartland. Warning time may be all but eliminated. Another big question we must revisit is: Whom now do we warn? If we have evidence of an imminent domestic attack, we need to warn not just the President and senior policymakers, we need to get the information -- and get it fast -- to police and fire chiefs, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that would produce vaccines. In fact, if time were of the essence, one could argue that first- responders, i.e., the local authorities, should be alerted at the same time we warn the President. We must pursue and develop stronger and tighter lash-ups with first- responders, the public health community, law enforcement and private industry. We've already taken some important steps in this direction. For the first time, the DCI's Counterterrorist Center, in concert with the FBI, is providing terrorism threat-related products to state and local officials. John Lauder, the NPC Chief I lionized a few minutes ago, recently attended a meeting at the FBI in which first-responders from all over the Washington metropolitan area gathered to discuss BCW incident response. It was the first time a senior nonproliferation official sat side-by-side and exchanged ideas with police and fire chiefs. We need to work more with federal and local authorities to put some mechanism -- some pipeline -- in place that has a fast enough band-width to get the right information to the right people at all levels in time to avert the worst. As a country, we have only started to develop strategies for limiting the damage and managing the consequences should such an attack occur. It is good that we have begun. We are light years ahead of other countries on this. But, our nation is far from prepared. With regard to the Intelligence Community -- deterrence and disruption function, let me tell you: The current expectation that U.S. intelligence will be able to thwart future BCW attacks is exceedingly high. Our fear is not that someday, somewhere, an attack will succeed and the Intelligence Community will be accused of failure. Our fear is that people will die -- a lot of people. The ominous trends I described earlier the growing number of actors wishing us harm, and their growing ability to cloak their BCW capabilities and intentions -- mean that the odds of a successful attach are increasing despite our vigilance. The nonproliferation effort in our Intelligence Community does not constitute a Manhattan Project operation. By that, I mean an operation in which leading experts from all over the country have been pulled in and assembled in one place to work on a single, definable product like building the atomic bomb. Our goal is different -- effectively countering an array of constantly evolving targets. At CIA we have indeed gathered some dedicated in-house talent. Much talent also resides elsewhere in the U.S. government and beyond, and we are working the BCW issue cross-community and with the Department of Defense and other government agencies as never before. But the talent we have is not sufficient, and additional resources alone will not solve the problem. In peacetime, it's not realistic to expect we can pull into government America's leading engineers and scientists as we did for the Manhattan Project. The next best thing we can do -- and it is critical that we do it -- is to reach out and tap into that pool of expertise that resides in the public health sector, the chemical and biotech industries. During last spring and summer, two distinguished officials -- Admiral David Jeremiah and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- chaired separate panels that scrutinized the Intelligence Community's performance in two areas where we failed to provide adequate warning to our customers. A common theme in each report was that the Intelligence Community needed to be far more aggressive in engaging outside expertise in assessing issues of highest priority to our customers. This is especially true in the scientific and technical fields where the best expertise can be found in academics and industry. The DoD recently approved a strategic estimates program, to be managed by the National Intelligence Council, that has at its core a program to bring experts such as you here tonight into our production effort to help ensure that we get the issues and analysis right and point our collection efforts against the correct targets. To that end, the DCI has created a senior scientist position within CIA's Nonproliferation Center, and has just hired Dr. Thomas Monath, whom many of you may know as one of the world's leading arbovirologists, to fill this part-time position. Tom remains Vice President of Research and Medical Affairs at OraVax, a biopharmaceutical firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Before joining OraVax in 1992, he had a distinguished career in public service as the Chief of the Virology Division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infections Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and as Medical Director of the Division of Vector-Borne Infections Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control in Fort Collins, Colorado. When I look at this distinguished audience, I can spot just the kind of talent we need to attract. And I know that Tom will be here tomorrow and Wednesday working the crowd. I urge you to consider how you might contribute to the defense of our country against the mounting BCW threat. With respect to intelligence support for monitoring regimes: Almost by definition, efforts are heavily oriented toward state actors. I would only repeat the obvious point that international strategies for monitoring and controlling proliferation by non-state actors is an area that governments and inter-governmental treaties and intelligence communities, including ours, are still trying to get their arms around. The CWC is a step in the right direction because it mandates legislation criminalizing production of chemical weapons, giving law enforcement authorities greater ability to preempt chemical attacks. That said, had the CWC been in effect at the time of the Tokyo subway incident, it probably would have had no preventive effect, because the Aum group assembled its CW capabilities largely through its own member scientists and network of front companies. We need to think more about how we can exert U.S. leadership to heighten international awareness of the growing BCW threat. I do not think that even friendly governments fully recognize how ominous the trends are. America today is less aware and prepared for the effects of a chemical or biological attack that it should be. As important as I think that statement is, you should know that other countries are even less aware and less prepared. We also need to reinforce the message -- and the Departments of State and Defense can play key roles here -- that non-proliferation efforts-do not benefit the United States alone -- they benefit everyone on the planet Earth, except, of course, the proliferators. To the maximum extent possible, nonproliferation initiatives should be multinational. Even though other countries may not have the range of capabilities the U.S. has to counter the BCW threat, they can still contribute in other ways, for instance, diplomatically or by virtue of being uniquely situated to provide key informational. OTHER INTELLIGENCE DILEMMAS: So, that's the big picture. Now, let me take you to a window on some practical dilemmas that U.S. Intelligence professionals constantly face as they work to counter the BCW threat. Some of these dilemmas are not exclusive to our BCW work; they apply to intelligence work and arms control efforts in general. I'll mention the most vexing, without getting into too much "inside baseball." In a perfect world, intelligence always heads off the bad guys at the pass before they can do any damage. In an almost perfect world, we catch them red- handed with the smoking-gun. But, in our far less-than-perfect world, no matter how hard we work nor how many assets we bring to bear we still may be able only to find pieces of an ominous puzzle. It is our duty to inform policymakers of what we know -- even when our information is, admittedly, incomplete. Why? So than our political leaders can take prudent steps to protect American lives and defend American interests. Second dilemma. When we find the smoking gun, we rarely can get full use of the discovery. We must balance the policy benefits of using it against damage to sources and methods. The most compelling evidence is often the most sensitive as well. If we share this information with another government, we run serious risk of losing a human asset or compromising another important source. Telling our story in public is even more risky, but we have been called upon to do that on several occasions in the BCW arena. Following the controversy over the Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, we released more information than we would have liked. The sad result in many such cases is that it can become more difficult to do our job in the future. This is an age-old trade-off that comes from the continuous give-and-take between the Intelligence Community and its customers in the policy community. Another dilemma is that our intelligence information is often unwelcome to those who selfishly resort to plausible deniability for reasons of political expediency. There have been many cases in which we tried to stop shipments of BCW-related material to proliferants, only to have the supplier-country smugly reply that, since there were some legitimate uses for these goods and we could not prove that they were solely intended for BCW use, it would not stop the transaction. One final dilemma: No matter what we say or go, what we say and do will be subject to controversy and scrutiny in our democracy. Make no mistake: We'd rather we had a vigorous democracy and the dilemma, than no democracy, and no dilemma! But, our adversaries' propaganda and their denial and deception strategies for BCW exploit our dilemma in every way they can. Many, countries were able to carry out illicit programs for years under a cloak of legitimacy. Libya still insists that its chemical weapons plant at Rabta is a pharmaceutical plant. The Iraqis called their CW production facility a pesticide plant and their main BW facility an animal feed plant. We found solid evidence of CW activity at Shifa in Khartoum. Sophisticated tests done on soil samples revealed the presence of EMPTA, a key precursor for the nerve agent VX. Perhaps if our information had been derived by less technical means, means more readily understood by the public, the case would not have been received with such skepticism. But I emphasize, the evidence was solid. Moreover the evidence fit into the ominous pattern we had been piecing together against bin Ladin and his network. Bin Ladin had attacked Americans before and he said he planned to do so again. He was seeking CW to use in future attacks. He was cooperating with the government of Sudan in those efforts. Shifa was linked both to bin Ladin and CW. We brought the evidence and our analysis to the President, and he took decisive action. All these dilemmas come with the intelligence territory. Dedicated Intelligence officers must confront and deal with them case-by-case, bringing our professional experience and our best judgment to bear, as we did in the case of Shifa. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Almost a decade has passed since Secretary Shultz made his impassioned plea for adoption of the Chemical Weapons Convention and challenged the international community to do better. He was right then and he is right now. We can and we must do better. We no longer live in a bipolar world where deterrence was more straight- forward and kept the nuclear and BCW threat at bay. Over the past ten years, the threat has become much greater. We face more proliferators, more elusive and sophisticated targets, and a whole net array of BCW agents. The growing BCW threat cannot be met by U.S. Intelligence along, but U.S. Intelligence will be crucial to meeting it. As I said at the outset, to deal effectively with the evolving BCW challenge, we all need to think together and work together in new ways. National and local governments, the military, medical world, law enforcement, private sector, the academic and scientific communities, the media, the communities you and I live in an across our country, and the world as well -- all of us must contribute. Let me close with a caveat, or, better put, an appeal for context. Woody Allen tells us that mankind today is at a crossroads. One path leads to hopelessness and despair, the other to total annihilation. Is my message tonight simply a variation on Woody's theme? If you don't get hit by a North Korean ICBM over the next five years, chances are you will suffer a horrible, premature death when Usama bin Laden poisons your home town water supply! Surely, we want to do more in this conference than set each other's hair on fire and try to put it out with a hammer! I call the BCW threat grave today at least in part because we have not collectively defined the problem and joined forces to deal with it. We are, as a result, more open to a serious incident and to surprise in general. This should make us pessimistic today. But its need not remove the possibility of a more hopeful outlook tomorrow -- if we get on top of the problem. Believe it or not, after twenty years in the intelligence business, I still remain optimistic about the future of mankind and about the potential of America's people and institutions to assure that future. My hope is that this conference will develop a set of concrete action items to get us moving in harness against the BCW threat. I want to assure you that the U.S. Intelligence Community is ready and eager to do its part. Let me stop here. I look forward to your questions and comments. (End Text)