[Senate Hearing 107-563]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-563
PREPARING FOR REALITY: PROTECTING AGAINST WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
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HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 28, 2002
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MAX CLELAND, Georgia THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah
JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri JIM BUNNING, Kentucky
MARK DAYTON, Minnesota PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Staff Director and Counsel
Kiersten Todt Coon, Professional Staff Member
Richard A. Hertling, Minority Staff Director
Libby W. Jarvis, Legislative Director for Senator Thompson
Jayson P. Roehl, Minority Professional Staff Member
Morgan P. Muchnick, Minority Professional Staff Member
Darla D. Cassell, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statement:
Page
Senator Lieberman............................................ 1
Senator Cleland.............................................. 4
Senator Akaka................................................ 5
Senator Dayton............................................... 7
WITNESSES
Friday, June 28, 2002
Lewis M. Branscomb, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Public Policy
and Corporate Management and Emeritus Director of the Science,
Technology and Public Policy Program, Center for Science and
International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University............................................. 7
Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., Vice President of Biological Programs,
Nuclear Threat Initiative...................................... 11
Janet Heinrich, Dr.PH., RN., Director, Health Care--Public Health
Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office......................... 14
William J. Madia, Ph.D., Director, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
and Executive Vice President, Battelle Memorial Institute...... 16
J. Leighton Read, M.D., General Partner, Alloy Ventures.......... 18
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Branscomb, Lewis M., Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 45
Hamburg, Margaret A., M.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 11
Prepared statement........................................... 66
Heinrich, Janet, Dr.PH., RN.:
Testimony.................................................... 14
Prepared statement........................................... 75
Madia, William J., Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 16
Prepared statement........................................... 89
Read, J. Leighton, M.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 18
Prepared statement........................................... 94
Appendix
Hon. John T. Hamre, President and Chief Executive Officer, Center
for Strategic and International Studies, prepared statement.... 99
American Society for Microbiology, prepared statement............ 121
Questions for the Record from Senator Akaka and responses from:
Dr. Hamburg.................................................. 132
Dr. Heinrich................................................. 134
PREPARING FOR REALITY: PROTECTING AGAINST WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
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FRIDAY, JUNE 28, 2002
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:38 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I.
Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman, Akaka, Cleland, and Dayton.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN
Chairman Lieberman. Good morning, all. This hearing will
come to order. I want to welcome you to the Senate Governmental
Affairs Committee's fourth hearing on the reorganization of our
Federal Government to improve America's domestic defenses.
I want to begin for the moment by thanking Senator Akaka
(in absentia) who is Chairman of this Committee's Subcommittee
on International Security,Proliferation and Federal Services,
for his thoughtful and tireless work on many of the issues that
we will be discussing today.
Our task this morning, building on Senator Akaka's work, is
to examine how a Department of Homeland Security can best meet
the technological challenge of protecting Americans from
attacks by weapons of mass destruction, and, of course, by that
we mean chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.
It is self-evident, but worth repeating, that there is no
greater threat and no graver danger than the use of such
weapons on our soil, notwithstanding the terrible damage and
death and destruction that we suffered from more traditional
attacks, although used unconventionally, on September 11.
The fight against terrorism might be described as brain-to-
brain combat. On those terms, America is very well-equipped to
win. Our computer scientists, biotechnology innovators,
electrical and mechanical engineers, doctors, chemists,
physicists, and a whole range of other scientific and
technological experts are the best in the world. They have
repeatedly worked wonders and will continue to keep our Nation
on the cutting edge of innovation.
But our enemies will also improvise and innovate in ways to
hurt more Americans, so we have got to marshal our scientific
and technological strength to both defend and go beyond the
capacity of those who would do us damage. We have got to
leverage America's wealth of technological resources to counter
current threats and anticipate new ones.
In this hearing, we are going to consider both this
Committee's proposals and the President's proposals for doing
exactly that in the framework of a new Department of Homeland
Security. In this particular area of homeland security, there
is significant common ground between our legislation and the
President's plan, but there are also differences and I want to
briefly lay them out at the start and then hope to consider
them as we go through this hearing.
The first is organizational structure. Our proposal would
create a Division on Emergency Preparedness and Response with
FEMA, the current FEMA, at its center, and that division would
be focused on response and preparedness, without regard to the
nature of the particular threat. We would then also establish
in our bill a separate Office of Science and Technology within
the new Department of Homeland Security with the focused
mission of coordinating all research and development related to
homeland security, including but not limited to detection,
prevention, and response to weapons of mass destruction.
The President's proposal would place greater emphasis on
emergency preparedness and response to threats from weapons of
mass destruction, as I understand the proposal, and the
separate division, which we call here the fourth division,
called Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear
Countermeasures.
So I want to explore today the nature of our response in
structure in this new Department to chemical, biological, and
nuclear attacks and to ask whether our preparedness and
response for those attacks might not better be included in a
division that oversees emergency preparedness and response
generally, rather than in a separate division.
Also, the President's proposed structure for the Department
would embed science and technology development within the
division devoted to countermeasures when, in my view, it is
more productive and logical to place all R&D efforts, ranging
from detection to protection to response, in an office focused
solely on that task and to elevate that office to the highest
level within the Department. That is why our proposal would
create--the initial proposal that passed out of the Committee
would create--an Office of Science and Technology to carry out
that function.
That brings me to a second area of concern and difference
between the two proposals, which is research capability. The
President's plan would transfer many research and development
functions from existing Departments including: Health and Human
Services, Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, and
the Department of Defense--to this new fourth Division on
Countermeasures within the new Department.
I want to make sure that when we bring these entities into
the new Department, if we do, we leave the agencies and
departments from which they came in good stead. We should also
ensure that these entities are carefully and logically
organized within the new Department, if, in fact, they are
moved there, with clean and clear lines of authority.
For example, the President's proposal suggests that the
Department of Homeland Security will jointly manage biological
research efforts in conjunction with the Secretary of HHS. As
far as I can tell, and we have the experts at the table, there
is no precedent for co-direction of Federal programs in this
way, and I want to explore the wisdom of such an arrangement
and how it might work if it were going to work.
Third, rapid technology development and deployment. Here,
since the initial bill was reported out of the Committee, I
think some of my own ideas have developed, and that is why I
want to explore the possibility of creating a new development
agency within the new Department which might be called SARPA,
which is Security Advanced Projects Research Agency, modeled
closely after DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency in the Pentagon, which has become one of the great
engines of innovation in American history.
DARPA, as the witnesses know, was created by President
Eisenhower in 1958, originally called ARPA, in response to the
launch of Sputnik by the Russians. From the beginning, it was
designed to be something different, a lean, flexible agency
that identifies our military's technological needs and then
leverages with funding the best minds in our country, in
government--at the laboratories, for instance--in academia, and
in the private sector to meet those needs.
DARPA's nimble, aggressive, and creative approach has
produced remarkably impressive and effective war-fighting
technologies and has done so relatively quickly. And in the
course of fulfilling that central mission, DARPA has also
developed technologies with broad commercial and societal
application, including something we now, today, call the
Internet. That came from DARPA.
I have high hopes and expectations for SARPA, the homeland
security counterpart, which would be located possibly in the
Office of Science and Technology that I mentioned. I think we
need dozens of new security technologies and we need them
quickly, and that includes devices and systems to detect
chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear devices, for
instance, at borders, ports, and airports, but also devices
that protect our cyberspace from devastating attacks and that
safeguard our physical infrastructure from sabotage, or
biometric devices that could do a better job at allowing for
entry into secure facilities or filtering entry into secure
facilities, or work to pioneer the next generation of so-called
smart buildings that detect intruders and protect vital systems
from being sabotaged. The range of potential projects is
literally endless.
One of the critical functions of the new Department must
also be developing diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines to treat
those who have been exposed to or infected by a bioterror
agent, and this is a massive undertaking because, right now,
the truth is, we have very few medical countermeasures
available. That is why I think we have got to direct the
Department to develop a national strategy for engaging the
Nation's biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms as critical
homeland defense allies and resources.
In the end, we will need to consider enacting tax
incentives, procurement provisions, liability reform, and a
revised drug approval process to spur the development of these
countermeasures, and I have actually drafted in legislation
that would do some of those.
Finally, I want to point out that if we are to muster all
of America's brain power to win this fight against terrorism,
the new Department of Homeland Security must work closely with
and learn from the Department of Defense. The Pentagon has
better technologies for detection, prevention, protection, and
response to attack than anyone, anywhere. If our Department of
Homeland Security is designed to reinvent all those wheels
rather than selectively adapting, applying, and focusing DOD
resources, that would be a mistake.
Senator Cleland is here. He is the source of some of the
best quotes I ever hear, so I want to just share with him one
that I read recently from Winston Churchill, who we are both--
actually, all of us are fond of quoting, particularly in these
days because of the challenges we face that are so different.
In 1941, Churchill said in a speech to the British people in
which he intended to both inspire the Allies and challenge,
confront the Axis powers, he said to the Axis powers, our
enemies, ``You do your worst and we will do our best.''
Today, we know that our enemies will do their worst to
apply technology to try to terrorize our people and disrupt our
way of life. We have an urgent duty now to do our best to
develop better technologies, to preempt, prevent, and protect
against even their most advanced and unpredictable attacks, and
I have no doubt that, working together, we will achieve that
mission.
Senator Cleland, thank you for being here.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CLELAND
Senator Cleland. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I find
the title of the hearing, quite frankly, engrossing,
``Preparing for Reality: Protecting Against Weapons of Mass
Destruction.'' I think that really is where we are.
Senator Sam Nunn, who is running the National Nuclear
Threat Initiative Program, of which Dr. Hamburg is a part, and
who had this Senate seat before I did for 24 years and was the
former Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has given me a
couple of concepts that I am working off of that, I think, to
embrace the new reality of certainly bioterrorism.
First, Senator Nunn said the organizing principle of the
Cold War was massing against the Soviet Union numbers of
missiles, and nuclear warheads, and measuring that mass in
throw weights and our ability to, in effect, mutually destruct
ourselves. He said the new era should be marked by the
organizing principle of working against catastrophic terrorism,
not just terrorism, but catastrophic terrorism, I think he puts
it in a proper light, that the real arms race now is not about
missiles and throw weights and nuclear warheads. The real arms
race is a race between now and the time that the terrorists get
their hands on tools of catastrophic destruction--biological,
chemical, or nuclear.
So I think we are in a new era here. The whole challenge,
it seems to me, for this country is pretty much two-fold.
First, to go on the strategic initiative abroad, fighting
terrorists abroad in their jungles, their caves, but being on
the strategic defensive here. That means that we have to get
our act together. It means we have to improve our coordination,
cooperation, and communication in order to properly defend
ourselves.
That is why I support the Homeland Security Department
initiative that came out of this Committee. I am an original
cosponsor. It is one reason why I feel very strongly that the
CDC in Atlanta should be the place where we place a center for
bioterrorism preparedness and response. Thirty-four percent of
the CDC's workload now has to do with bioterrorism. It is just
not focused. It is not a place where either the Director of HHS
or the Director of Homeland Security can call and get the word,
the definitive word, on what is happening in terms of
bioterrorism preparedness and bioterrorism response. I think we
need that. That would improve coordination, cooperation, and
communication tremendously.
My questions today, Mr. Chairman, will be along the lines
of what the panelists feel about how we can improve this
Nation's preparedness and response, particularly in terms of
bioterrorism, and particularly where we have, in effect, two
main pieces of guidance in the Federal Government that split
the Federal Government. One piece of guidance is a 1995
directorate by President Clinton by Executive Order mandating
the FBI to be the lead agency on terrorism, then in 1998 a law
by the U.S. Congress naming the CDC as lead agency on
bioterrorism.
And in a case like the anthrax situation, you had both
agencies going to the scene at the same time, one hopefully
identifying it properly, the CDC, then the FBI shutting the
crime scene down. So we have two conflicting pieces of guidance
here. We need to straighten that out, get that protocol right
before the next biological attack.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Cleland. I
appreciate your being here. Senator Akaka.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
say good morning to our witnesses and thank you for being here
today at this hearing as we discuss how the new Department of
Homeland Security should address threats from weapons of mass
destruction.
I want to particularly thank my good friend, Chairman
Senator Lieberman, for calling this hearing and to commend him
for being what I consider the man of the hour and a
distinguished leader by proposing legislation in the Senate on
homeland security and holding hearings to deal with the
critical issues that face our Nation. His bill, as you know,
was considered and passed by this Committee before the
President issued his and so I want to give him that credit and
pronounce him as a great leader here in the Senate.
I have been working with him on emergency preparedness and
bioterrorism now, Mr. Chairman, for some time. We first asked,
can a bioterrorism attack happen? This is a little while ago.
Today, we ask, how can we reduce the threat? So it is a
different kind of question that we ask today.
The threats we face will continue to change as our
adversaries mature and new adversaries emerge. Therefore,
whatever format we choose for this new Department must be
flexible, and flexible enough to adapt to these changes
quickly.
Unlike the Chairman's bill, the President's proposal would
establish a fourth division in the Department of Homeland
Security to develop policies against weapons of mass
destruction. However, transferring bioterrorism and public
health activities out of the Department of Health and Human
Services and into a new agency has the potential to fracture
rather than consolidate functions. We must be very careful to
enhance rather than diminish our capability to meet emerging
threats.
This new agency should coordinate and facilitate research
and development activities, which would encourage cooperation
across agencies and disciplines. The new Department should
identify research priorities. The proposed division can make
sure that new countermeasures meet the needs of local, State,
and Federal partners.
American ingenuity and creativity are among our greatest
assets, no question. We must harness this spirit and draw upon
the vast resources of the private sector in our search for
effective countermeasures.
I recently met with inventors from Hawaii who are
developing environmental detection techniques and air
filtration devices. They contacted me because of their
confusion over who they should approach within the government.
Why not make this new Department a one-stop clearinghouse for
information and guidelines on R&D opportunities?
Research and development alone will not be effective if
used inappropriately in preparedness efforts and training. The
ability of local fire fighters, police officers, and doctors to
respond to WMD terrorism must be improved.
I am not convinced that splitting mitigation and response
activities between two different under secretaries as proposed
by the President will do this. Will shifting the authority for
biomedical research to a Department of Homeland Security while
leaving the expertise within HHS improve our ability to fight
disease? Such actions seem unnecessary and could degrade our
emergency preparedness efforts.
The goal must be to reduce the loss of life and property
and restore public confidence following a terrorist attack. We
should focus our efforts not only on R&D, but in training
appropriate individuals and the general public in what actions
to take should we face a WMD event.
As we work toward the objective, we should enhance the
government's response to natural disasters and public health
events. For example, we would need to ensure that APHIS has the
resources and personnel to continue to protect Hawaii's fragile
ecosystem while meeting its proposed new homeland security
functions. We must be careful not to create a system that will
divert personnel and resources to homeland security from core
agency missions, thus making both less effective. We need a
national strategy to identify how this new Department will make
America safer and her people more secure. That is what we are
here to do and we look forward to your thoughts on this matter.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to
the testimony.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Akaka. Before you
arrived, when I gave my statement, I thanked you for your
leadership in this area through your Subcommittee over many
years. I regret that I did not repeat it when I introduced you,
although somebody told me years ago that in Washington you know
you are doing well when somebody compliments you when you are
not in the room. [Laughter.]
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much.
Chairman Lieberman. So you are doing well, Senator Akaka.
[Laughter.]
Senator Dayton, thanks for being here.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DAYTON
Senator Dayton. Thank you. I have nothing to say at the
outset. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses. Thank
you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks. I want to give my three
colleagues here a medal. I am the Chairman of the Committee, so
I have to be here. Surprisingly--and I am thrilled to be here,
may I say to the witnesses. [Laughter.]
This is an important hearing. But what I am about to say to
the three of them is, the Senate surprisingly finished its pre-
July 4 recess work yesterday, which it was expected to do
today, so these three are here out of a sincere desire to be
involved in these deliberations and I thank them very much.
Senator Dayton. Mr. Chairman, I will just say these
hearings have been outstanding. I have said that before, but it
bears repeating. This series has been among the very best
hearings I have attended in my 1\1/2\ years in the Senate, so
thank you and your staff.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Dayton. We have been
very fortunate to have a great group of witnesses on an
important topic and thanks for your substantial contribution to
the hearings.
Two announcements. There is an empty chair there, and
sadly, it is Dr. John Hamre,\1\ who has terrible flu. He has
submitted testimony and it will be part of the record. I
believe we can release it to the press if there is interest, or
maybe we already have. We will see him on another occasion.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Hamre appears in the Appendix on
page 99.
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Second, Senator Thompson wanted very much to be here today
but he could not and he wanted me particularly to welcome Dr.
Madia, who he is very proud to have here.
Let us begin with Dr. Lewis Branscomb, Professor Emeritus,
Public Policy and Corporate Management, JFK School of
Government at Harvard, and co-chair of a very important
committee about whose work he will report. Dr. Branscomb, we
look forward to your testimony.
TESTIMONY OF LEWIS M. BRANSCOMB, PH.D.,\2\ EMERITUS PROFESSOR
OF PUBLIC POLICY AND CORPORATE MANAGEMENT AND EMERITUS DIRECTOR
OF THE SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY PROGRAM, CENTER
FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL
OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Dr. Branscomb. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I do want
to discuss very briefly the work of the Committee on Science
and Technology for Countering Terrorism at the National
Academy's National Research Council. Our report, entitled
``Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology
in Countering Terrorism,'' came out last Monday. I am very
proud that Peggy Hamburg was a member of that Committee. So,
too, was Ash Carter, who testified, I believe, on Wednesday----
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\2\ The prepared statement of Dr. Branscomb appears in the Appendix
on page 45.
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Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Dr. Branscomb [continuing]. And a number of other
distinguished Americans.
Our report was completed and was in the final stages of
report review when the President made his statement that he
intended to send forward a bill, though we were complete and in
press before I actually saw the details of it. But our report,
in fact, was able to address two very important features that
we believe ought to be in a Department of Homeland Security.
But perhaps more important than that, this report, written by
119 experts, vetted and very skillfully evaluated by 46
independent experts, contains 134 detailed recommendations
discussing the science and technology responses to a great
variety of threats, which we said as little about as we had to
in order to justify the conclusions.
It is very important that you appreciate that ours was a
report about catastrophic terrorism. We believe very strongly
that there are many kinds of attacks that could be
catastrophic--defined in terrorist sense. It is very important
to appreciate that the legislative meaning, at least, of the
words ``weapons of mass destruction'' do not cover all the--by
any means--threats of catastrophic terrorism. Many of those
threats could be caused by combinations of the use of
conventional explosives, perhaps with a cyber attack, or
perhaps with a radiological attack, which is surely not part of
the weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless, it is a source
of terror, nonetheless.
Chairman Lieberman. Dr. Branscomb, excuse me. How would you
describe what happened on September 11? I was finding myself in
my opening statement reaching for----
Dr. Branscomb. Clearly catastrophic terrorism----
Chairman Lieberman. Catastrophic terrorism.
Dr. Branscomb [continuing]. But not done with weapons of
mass destruction----
Chairman Lieberman. Exactly.
Dr. Branscomb [continuing]. Unless you want to accept a
broader definition of that term, which I would be happy to do
in the President's bill, in which the R&D function is attached
to one of four divisions concerned with weapons of mass
destruction as normally defined, as in the Department of
Energy, as nuclear, biological, and military chemical weapons.
Of course, we may interpret chemical as including explosives,
indeed in tank cars of industrial chemicals which, under
certain circumstances, could produce catastrophic consequences.
So we believe it is very important to look at the full
range of possible attacks that would be intolerable if carried
out against the United States.
Senator Dayton. Mr. Chairman, may I just interject?
Chairman Lieberman. Yes, please.
Senator Dayton. I am sorry, and I know you do not intend
this, but there was an attempted catastrophic attack of mass
destruction, I do not know about the term, but we were told by
Mayor Giuliani when we were at Ground Zero the following week
that there were 25,000 people evacuated from the two towers
because they did not collapse immediately. The Pentagon plane
fortunately hit a relatively unpopulated area. The other plane
was heroically crashed before it could reach its intended
target. The losses to those individuals and the psychic damage
to the country, was massive. So I do not dispute your
characterization, but I do not want anyone here listening to
think that we do not treat this as an attempt of a mass
destruction which was partially executed.
Dr. Branscomb. Indeed, Mr. Dayton, that is exactly what I
meant to say. We regarded that as a catastrophic terrorist
attack and our report is about catastrophic attacks. The reason
I have avoided using the word ``weapons of mass destruction''
is because in prior legislation and in a lot of public policy
work, those words do not include the cyber attacks, they do not
include ordinary chemical explosives, they do not include two
tank cars full of two industrial chemicals of the appropriate
kind being brought together side-by-side and somehow combined.
I really do not want to talk about things that I would just
as soon al Qaeda not know about, but I can tell you, there are
many major catastrophes that could involve more than 1,000
people killed, more than $10 billion worth of damage done, or
even with less than that that cause the people to be so
horrified and so frightened that they lose confidence in the
government's ability to protect them. This is my personal
definition of catastrophic terrorism.
Chairman Lieberman. This is an interesting and important
discussion. I think your point is well taken, and in some ways,
we have grown a little bit sloppy by referring as if it were an
exclusive definition to chemical, biological, and nuclear, as
weapons of mass destruction, as if they were the only weapons
of mass destruction. In fact, as you point out, there was
obviously mass destruction on September 11 without the use of
chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. It was catastrophic.
That is perhaps a more inclusive term.
Dr. Branscomb. When we became aware that the President
intended to submit legislation and, therefore, there was a high
likelihood that we would have a bipartisan conclusion and there
would be a Department created, we were still in operation so we
were able to draw two very important--well, really three very
important conclusions about any department, however it was
structured.
One was that it must have a senior technical officer.
Counterterrorism is a technology problem. This Department is
going to be a technology department and the best asset we have
in this country, as you yourself said, are the brains and
talents and enthusiasm, indeed, of the technical community to
get behind this problem and see what we can do to substantially
reduce it.
The other recommendation was something that we always had
in there because we think it ought to be done now, even while
there is an Office of Homeland Security and not yet a
department, and that is the creation of what we call the
Homeland Security Institute. What we have in mind here is a
very specific notion. We believe very strongly that the biggest
problem in utilizing scientific and technical capability is to
truly understand what the problems are, that is, what the
threats are, what the vulnerabilities are, and how to do the
risk analysis, how to model and simulate the threats and the
vulnerabilities, how, in fact, to design test beds to determine
what kinds of technologies actually work, to put together red
teams, to test the technologies, at least virtually, and find
out if they are working.
Ours is not a report with an R&D list of things to fund.
This is a report that is aimed at giving the Nation truly the
capability that it requires, no nonsense business. Therefore,
we do deal extensively with our concerns about how the
government goes about getting this work done, even though it
does not deal specifically with the structure of a department.
Let me also say that the report does provide, we believe, a
very useful tool to the Congress and the administration for
testing what alternative forms that the Department might take
would most effectively permit the government to use the science
and technology capability to good use because we do, we
believe, describe the criteria or the conditions that really
are important for this R&D to be effective. As I just said a
few minutes ago, the first of those conditions is that we truly
know how to set the priorities. There is an enormous range of
vulnerabilities. I do not think we can cover them all with the
same level of effort, or even should try. The critical ones
deserve the attention.
Now, one other principle I would like to address is not so
explicitly given in our study but it is something that Dr.
Klausner and I--we were the co-chairs of this study--believe is
an important principle, and the principle is not addressed in
either of the two bills, although the bills imply how this
would be done.
The issue is this: We know that even if the administration
puts R&D activities into a department, it is only going to put
a tiny fraction of the government's capability in science and
technology. We had a huge capability developed all through the
Cold War. So the question is, how would the Department acquire
or access the capabilities of those departmental resources for
getting urgent research done, and there are three
possibilities.
The first, nobody wants to do. That is to move the entire
enterprise and have the Department be the government.
The second one is to do what I believe the President's bill
suggests they intend, at least with respect to NIH, and that is
to say, well, we can leave the people where they are in the
current Department. We just take their money away and then give
it back to them. But this time, it comes back with
micromanagement.
Now, we have done that experiment. Take a look at DOE. Ask
any set of witnesses whether they think the DOE system of
managing its national laboratories is effective and they will
tell you that there is a long history of micromanagement. It is
not intended. It is just that the structure is such that the
money that flows to those DOE labs comes from very large
numbers of different line items in various appropriations
managed by different offices, each of whom has control over a
little piece of the budgets of one of those laboratories.
The third alternative, which we believe is the right one,
is to ensure that there is a strong capability in the Executive
Office of the President to create strategy for Homeland
Security, at least for the S&T piece of it--I believe it should
be for all of it--to create that strategy and to get
commitments from the whole government to support that strategy,
so that the agencies that are qualified to contribute will know
what the strategy is, will put proposed programs in their
proposals to the President and the Office of Management and
Budget. Those will be vetted at the Executive Office of the
President on the advice of the Department, and let me say, with
the support of OSTP, and then there will be a line item placed
in that agency's budget to do the work, and they know what they
are supposed to do, they are given the money to do it, and they
run the program.
They, of course, can be asked to be responsible to the
Department to provide reports, briefings, whatever the
Department needs to assess whether the work is well done or
not. But this is a different method than taking the money away
from the Department and then giving it back to them. Just give
the money to the Department and make them commit what they are
going to do.
Now, if I may, I would like to take off my academy hat and
speak for this Lewis Branscomb who has spent 20 years running
government R&D, 15 running IBM's R&D, and 15 years studying it
at Harvard. Because I was finally able to get your bill just a
couple days ago and I studied it very carefully, I have an
appendix to my testimony that separately is my personal
evaluation, not the academy's, the R&D dimensions of the
proposed bills, each bill analyzed separately.
What I would like to do, if I have a few minutes left, is
to take you through a comparison of the two bills, through at
least eight of ten very important attributes the bills need to
satisfy.
Chairman Lieberman. I am going to ask if you would hold
that and then I will come back during the questioning period. I
appreciate very much not only your testimony today, but the
efforts you made in preparing the written testimony, which we
will go over. So for now, I thank you, Dr. Branscomb. It has
been very helpful testimony.
Our next witness is Dr. Margaret Hamburg, former
Commissioner of Health of New York, Assistant Secretary of HHS,
and now the Vice President for Biological Programs at the
Nuclear Threat Initiative. Thank you.
TESTIMONY OF MARGARET A. HAMBURG,\1\ M.D., VICE PRESIDENT OF
BIOLOGICAL PROGRAMS, NUCLEAR THREAT INITIATIVE
Dr. Hamburg. Thank you. I very much appreciate the
invitation to discuss the policy implications for public health
in bioterrorism threats that would stem from the creation of a
new Department of Homeland Security, and my remarks will be
much more focused on that particular question, although I am
delighted to talk more broadly in the question and answer
period.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Hamburg appears in the Appendix
on page 66.
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The formation of such a Department is clearly needed, yet
we should move forward carefully, as you are doing, to define
what are the goals and how best to achieve them. The
opportunities for greater efficiency, effectiveness, and
accountability are fairly evident in realms of overlapping
activities, such as border security, Customs procedures, and
aspects of emergency response.
How best to organizationally address the activities related
to bioterrorism prevention, preparedness, and response is a
more complicated question. Bioterrorism is fundamentally
different from other security threats we face. Meaningful
progress against the biological threat depends on understanding
it in the context of infectious and/or epidemic disease. It
requires different investments and different partners.
Unless we recognize this, our Nation's preparedness
programs will continue to be inadequately designed. The wrong
first responders will be trained and equipped. We will fail to
build the critical infrastructure we need for detection and
response. The wrong research agendas will be developed. And we
will never effectively deal with the long-term consequence
management needs that such an event would entail. We may also
miss critical opportunities to prevent an attack from occurring
in the first place.
There are certain real advantages to placing these programs
within a new Federal Department of Homeland Security. The
biological threat--and the public health programs required to
address it--is of profound importance to our national security.
By residing within this new Department, it may command more
priority attention and support. It may help ensure that experts
in biodefense and public health preparedness are full partners
at the national security table.
However, including biodefense and public health programs in
the new Department has some serious drawbacks. A fundamental
concern is they will lose program focus and organizational
coherence by combining biodefense activities--which are largely
within infectious disease, medicine, and public health--into a
department devoted mainly to a very different set of security
functions and concerns. These biodefense activities could well
be swallowed up in this huge new agency, which will likely lack
the expertise and technical leadership necessary to plan and
direct vital bioterrorism preparedness functions.
In addition, most of the public health activities required
for bioterrorism are just as important for the day-to-day
functions of public health and medical care. In the months
since September 11, the Bush administration, through programs
developed and administered by the HHS Office of Public Health
Preparedness and the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, has made significant progress building the programs
necessary to strengthen public health infrastructure for
bioterrorism preparedness within this broader context.
If these programs are carved out and moved into this new
Department, it will disconnect certain functions, such as
bioterrorism surveillance, laboratory networks, and response
from other essential components of infectious disease response
and control. It will thin out already limited expertise and
enormously complicate the ability of our public health partners
at the State and local level to work effectively. Rather than
consolidating functions in a single agency, transferring the
bioterrorism preparedness activities into this new Department
may actually require the creation of parallel and duplicative
capabilities.
I would certainly recommend that HHS and CDC should
continue to have direct responsibility for programs related to
the public health infrastructure for infectious disease
recognition, investigation, and response, including
bioterrorism. However, we will need to integrate these
activities into the framework for homeland security. To achieve
this, a public health professional with appropriate expertise
could be placed within the Department of Homeland Security with
dual reporting to HHS. This person could work closely with CDC
to achieve mutually agreed upon national security and public
health priorities for bioterrorism preparedness and response.
Similarly, future preparedness requires a comprehensive
biodefense research agenda that links national security needs
and research and development priorities and that shows proper
balance and integration of relevant research activities across
various departments and includes threats to humans, animals,
and crops. Coordination of such an agenda could well be in the
domain of a new Department of Homeland Security, engaging the
expert input of Departments like HHS, DOD, Commerce, DOE, and
USDA.
However, the role of the Department of Homeland Security
should be that of coordinator-facilitator only. The actual
design, implementation, and oversight of the research agenda
and its component programs must remain at the level of the
mission agencies where the scientific and technical expertise
resides. HHS, in the unique role played by NIH, represents the
primary department with responsibility for biomedical research
and should remain central in setting priorities and directing
and administering resources.
To address concerns raised across many domains, a new
Department of Homeland Security will require significant
expertise in public health, infectious disease, and biodefense.
This must be seen as an important priority. The appointment of
an Under Secretary for Biological Programs should be considered
to oversee and integrate the various activities going on within
the Department that relate to the biological threat. In
addition, that individual might be charged with liaison
responsibility to the various other departments with
significant responsibilities and programs in the biological
arena.
In the final analysis, strengthening our homeland security
programs will depend on achieving dramatically improved
coordination and accountability across many agencies, as well
as the private sector. This could be achieved in many ways.
Furthermore, no matter where the lines are drawn to define the
components of a new Homeland Security Department, critical
activities will fall outside. So whatever the new Department
may look like, we must establish additional mechanisms to
assure adequate oversight and coordination.
There are many more outstanding concerns that we could
discuss and that will need to be clarified before such
important legislation is passed, but in the interest of time, I
have limited my comments.
I deeply respect your efforts, Mr. Chairman and the Members
of this Committee, in taking on this vital but difficult
challenge. I welcome the opportunity to work with you on this
and would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Dr. Hamburg, for an excellent
opening statement.
Next, we are going to hear from Janet Heinrich, who is the
Director of Health Care and Public Health Issues with the U.S.
General Accounting Office. Thanks for being here.
TESTIMONY OF JANET HEINRICH, DR.PH, RN,\1\ DIRECTOR, HEALTH
CARE--PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE
Ms. Heinrich. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I
appreciate the opportunity to be here to discuss the
establishment of a Department of Homeland Security. My remarks
will focus on the aspects of the President's proposal concerned
with public health preparedness found in Title V of the
proposed legislation and the transfer of research and
development programs found in Title III.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Heinrich appears in the Appendix
on page 75.
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The consolidation of Federal assets and resources for
medical response to an emergency, as outlined in the proposed
legislation, has the potential to improve efficiency and
accountability for those activities at the Federal, State, and
local levels. The programs with missions closely linked to
homeland security that would be consolidated include FEMA,
certain units of DOJ, and the HHS Office of the Assistant
Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness. The
Strategic National Stockpile currently operated by CDC would be
transferred to the new Department, as would the Select Agent
Registration Enforcement Program.
Issues of coordination will remain, however. The proposed
transfer of the MMRS does not address the need for enhanced
regional communication and coordination and the NDMS functions
now as a partnership between or among HHS, the Department of
Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, FEMA, State and
local governments, and the private sector. Thus, coordination
across departments will be required.
The President's proposal to shift the authority, funding,
and priority setting for all programs assisting State and local
agencies in public health emergencies from HHS to the new
Department raises concern because of the dual-purpose nature of
these programs. These include the CDC Bioterrorism Preparedness
and Response Program and the HRSA Hospital Preparedness
Program. Functions funded through these programs are central to
investigations of naturally occurring infectious disease
outbreaks and to regular public health communications, as well
as to identify and respond to bioterrorist events.
Just as in the West Nile virus outbreak in New York City,
which initially was feared to be a bioterrorist event, when an
unusual case of disease occurs, public health officials must
investigate to determine the cause. Although the origin of the
disease may not be clear at the outset, the same public health
resources are needed to investigate.
While under the proposal the Secretary of Homeland Security
would be given control over these programs, their
implementation would be carried out by another department. The
proposal also authorizes the President to direct that these
programs no longer be carried out in this manner without
addressing the circumstances under which such authority would
be exercised.
We are concerned that the separation of control over
programs from their operations could lead to difficulty in
balancing priorities. Although HHS priorities are important for
homeland security, they are just as important to the day-to-day
needs of public health agencies and hospitals, such as
reporting meningitis outbreaks or providing alerts to the
medical community about influenza. The current proposal does
not clearly provide a structure that ensures that both the
goals of homeland security and public health will be met.
The new Department would also be given overall
responsibility for research and development for Homeland
Security. In addition to coordination, the role of the
Department should include forging collaborative relationships
with programs at all levels of government in developing a
strategic plan for research. The new Department will need to
develop mechanisms to coordinate information on research being
performed across the government as well as end user needs. It
should be noted that the legislation tasks the new Department
with coordinating civilian events only, leaving out DOD and the
intelligence agencies and also would allow it to conduct
relevant research.
The proposal would transfer parts of DOE's nonproliferation
and verification research program to the new Department. For
example, it is not clear whether only the programmatic
management, the dollars would move, or that the scientists
conducting the research would move. Again, because of the
multi-purpose nature of these research programs, it may be more
prudent to contract with the laboratories to conduct the
research rather than to move the scientists.
The proposal would transfer the responsibility for all
civilian health-related biological defense research programs,
but the programs would continue to be carried out through NIH.
These dual-use programs include efforts to understand basic
biological mechanisms of infection and to develop and test
rapid diagnostic tools, vaccines, and drugs. For example,
research on a drug to treat patients with HIV is now being
investigated as a prototype for developing drugs against
smallpox.
The proposal to transfer responsibility for research raises
many of the same concerns we have with the public health
preparedness programs. Although there is a clear need for the
new Department to have responsibility for setting policy,
developing a strategic plan, and providing leadership for
overall coordination for research, we are concerned that
control and priority setting responsibilities will not be
vested in the entity best positioned to understand the
potential of basic research efforts or the relevance of
research being carried out in other non-homeland defense
programs.
In summary, many aspects of the proposed consolidation of
response activities and research are in line with our previous
recommendations to consolidate programs, coordinate functions,
and provide a statutory basis for leadership of Homeland
Security. We have, though, several clear concerns.
Mr. Chairman, this completes my prepared statement and I
would be happy to answer any questions.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Ms. Heinrich. That was very
helpful.
Next, Dr. William Madia, Director of the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory and also Executive Vice President of Battelle
Memorial Institute, which puts you on both coasts.
Dr. Madia. Both sides, exactly.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you.
TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM J. MADIA, PH.D.,\1\ DIRECTOR, OAK RIDGE
NATIONAL LABORATORY AND EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, BATTELLE
MEMORIAL INSTITUTE
Dr. Madia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Committee. It is a pleasure to appear before you this morning
and provide my testimony. I will focus my remarks on how we can
best apply the U.S. research enterprise in support of the
proposed Department of Homeland Security, particularly as it
applies to weapons of mass destruction threats.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Madia appears in the Appendix on
page 89.
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The homeland security challenges we face are enduring,
daunting in scope, and technically complex. Therefore, we
require a science and technology response that is equally
comprehensive.
With its emphasis on the critical role of science and
technology, I would like to express my strong support for the
President's proposal for the creation of a Department of
Homeland Security. I will make four points regarding science
and technology in this new Department, which I believe are
fully consistent with the President's proposal.
First, I support the new Department being formally assigned
the role of leading the Nation's technology development and
deployment efforts as they apply to homeland security. The
proposal properly establishes that cross-cutting responsibility
for science and technology with the new Department's Under
Secretary for Chemical, Biological, Radiation, and Nuclear
Countermeasures.
Next, since we will never be able to protect ourselves
against every threat, nor will there be unlimited resources, we
must set our science and technology priorities based upon the
best understanding of our vulnerabilities, the possibilities
offered by science and technology, and the cost effectiveness
of proposed solutions. Thus, it is essential for the new
Department to establish a dedicated risk analysis and
technology evaluation capability, obviously informed by the
threat identification and analysis functions of our
intelligence community.
Third, I support the establishment of a problem-directed
technology development program in the new Department. This
program should be responsive to the specific challenges and
needs of the customers of the new Department, both those inside
of DHS as well as other State and local agencies, those who
actually will end up the technologies developed here. These
programs should be designed to ``close the gap'' between new
ideas for fighting terrorism and deployable solutions. The mode
in which DARPA operates comes to mind as a good management
model, as has been suggested by Dr. Marburger and also previous
panelists.
In addition, the elements of management flexibility and
control outlined in the President's proposal will be
particularly important in managing the R&D function of the new
Department.
Finally, the reason our Nation was able to deploy relevant
and impactful technologies almost immediately in response to
the terrorist attacks is because of past investments in the
basic research which underpins these technologies. To ensure
our long-term national capacity to create new and better
solutions, we should provide continuing strong support for
basic research programs in such areas as information
technology, modeling and simulation, biotechnology,
nanosciences, and advanced center technologies.
Like others, my comments do not imply the creation of
extensive research capabilities in this new Department. Rather,
DHS should draw broadly on our existing government, university,
and industrial research base.
In particular, the national laboratories under the
stewardship of DOE should play a very substantial role, since
these laboratories have a wealth of specialized capabilities
associated with weapons of mass destruction, and in particular
in addressing nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological
threats. There are numerous examples of these capabilities, but
they are in the written testimony and I will not cover them
here.
The national labs, however, must, in turn, focus on and
deliver against this new Department's science and technology
agenda. The Homeland Security Technology Center proposed at
Lawrence Livermore provides a needed focus for this
coordination and the intended Centers of Excellence at the
major DOE national laboratories provides for an effective way
to obtain the necessary commitment of resources.
In closing, I would like to reflect that only twice before
in our history have we seen the Nation's scientific community
be so galvanized around a critical national issue as they are
today on meeting the needs of homeland security challenges. The
first occasion, which was the development of the atomic bomb
through the Manhattan Project, ended up creating the Atomic
Energy Commission, which later became the Department of Energy.
The second occasion was a response to Sputnik and President
Kennedy's challenge to place a man on the moon within a decade.
That led to the creation of NASA.
With the formation of the Department of Homeland Security
to give leadership and a focal point to our science and
technology community, I am confident that today's scientists
and engineers will meet our homeland security challenges in a
way that is every bit as successful as they have been in
earlier times.
Thank you, and, of course, I would be glad to answer any
questions you have.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Dr. Madia, for an
excellent statement.
Our final witness is Dr. J. Leighton Read, who is a General
Partner of Alloy Ventures. In a general sense, Dr. Read is here
to represent the private sector and the considerable
contribution that the private sector can make to marshaling our
technological and scientific strength in the war against
terrorism, so I thank you very much for being here.
TESTIMONY OF J. LEIGHTON READ, M.D.,\1\ GENERAL PARTNER, ALLOY
VENTURES
Dr. Read. Thank you, Senator, and it is also not only a
privilege to address the Members, but also to hear my fellow
witnesses' comments, informed by their experience and
thoughtful work.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Read appears in the Appendix on
page 94.
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I am a physician by training. My academic research dealt
with cost effectiveness and balancing of risk and benefit and
costs in evaluation of new medical technologies and important
medical decisions, but for the last 14 years, I have been
starting biotechnology companies, helping them get funded, and
now financing them as a venture capitalist.
I do not know that I can carry the full weight of
representing the private sector in this country, but I would be
delighted to share some thoughts with you about how people
representing these vast pools of capital are standing by to
invest in technology. There are about $75 billion of capital
committed to venture capital partnerships that are not yet
committed to new companies. So there are vast pools of capital
out there.
Chairman Lieberman. Just repeat that again so we all
appreciate it.
Dr. Read. There are $75 billion committed by America's
pension funds and endowments and individuals to venture capital
partnerships that are ready to be invested. This is current----
Chairman Lieberman. It is sitting, waiting for appropriate
opportunities, right?
Dr. Read. That is correct. By the way, talking about a few
numbers, I saw a report the other day that venture capital-
based companies now produce about 11 percent of the GDP, over
$1 trillion, and if you add up all the direct and indirect
jobs, you can get to something like 27 million jobs. So this is
an important part of the economy.
These vast flows of capital include also the public
markets, and in general, these investments are focused not on
companies that earn their profits by doing contract R&D or by
providing service businesses. The real attraction for this kind
of capital is to invest in relatively high-risk, high-
opportunity companies that can generate explosive growth into
huge markets with really clear unmet need. That really brings
us to the gap or the problem that the creation of a Homeland
Security Department can address, because right now, it is not
clear that there are those markets and that there are those
opportunities in developing countermeasures.
There is a lot of marvelous and important groundwork being
laid with R&D that is being sponsored inside the government and
outside the government that will help provide a basis for that,
but we usually--almost always--need the private sector to
finish the job for countermeasures such as vaccines and drugs,
biologicals, diagnostics--and it has to be clear that there is
a market.
So I would like to emphasize the importance of including a
focus on the results, the outcome, rather than just the
process. The creation of a strong, centralized prioritization
focus in the Department is absolutely essential to get this
done. It is also very important that the incentives be clear. I
do not think markets fail with respect to these kinds of
products. Markets signal us about what the incentives really
are, and some of your proposals, Mr. Chairman, are very welcome
and deserve very serious thought.
In my opinion, in many cases, the most useful incentives
are going to be quite particular to both the nature of the
threat, whether it is biological or otherwise, and maybe even
within the realm of biological, there may be important
particularities in terms of how to design the incentives,
whether a purchase fund or other types of incentives related to
intellectual property or tax are important.
It would be a terrific opportunity to actually ask that the
Department engage in dialogue with appropriate experts and that
the Department have the ability to help influence and design
incentives that will then require legislation to move forward,
so I hope that the Committee will consider making that part of
the authorization.
From my own experience, trying to figure out who is the go-
to person to help make a decision or indicate whether there is
going to be government interest, a customer, in other words, it
is very hard. You have read report after report from Hart-
Rudman, the DSB reports, and others that we have got this
massive problem of duplication and silos and lack of
coordination. Clearly, that is one of the opportunities that
this Department can address.
We are going to have to make some tough choices. We are
going to have to pull some things out of departments where
people have been comfortable and there is a lot of expertise in
order to get the coordination that we need, and I would
advocate that we do make those tough choices, and then we also
have to deal with the matter of coordination. I am concerned
about having parallel functions that provide too many parallel
groups. It will just continue to compound the problem of more
silos.
So it should be clear to the private sector players that we
want to engage, who to go to, who has got the decisionmaking
authority, and what the ultimate rewards will be for those that
are successful.
Now, one more point I would like to make. Some people have
pointed out, or argued, worried, that this is too hard. There
are just too many threats. Well, actually, if we think
carefully about where the real damage could come from,
infectious agents and specific biological agents that are
readily available to our opponents now represent an opportunity
to go ahead and commit to significant programs, as you said
before in your opening remarks.
We generally have been successful when we try and build
vaccines, for example, for particular targets. HIV is a
counter-example. It remains very stubborn and elusive, but in
general, when we have really focused our basic science at NIH,
our applied research in industry, we have been successful in
creating vaccines for important targets. So there is a lot of
room for hope there. There is dual-use. There are going to be
cases where the government is the only customer, but it is not
just this government.
There was a little earthquake in Taiwan that produced a 10-
day delay in the shipment of chips, disk drives, flat-panel
displays to my home in Silicon Valley and a few dozen companies
in Silicon Valley missed their quotas, missed their financials
for the quarter. This was the September 1999 event in Taiwan.
That was just a 10-day delay.
Imagine five cases of confirmed smallpox on the island of
Taiwan, how many months it will be before a shipping container
in the Port of Oakland or a 747 full of those parts lands in
the San Francisco airport? We and our trading partners are
actually in an interconnected web. There has not been enough
discussion about how we can get our trading partners and our
allies engaged to pay their share of this so that we can create
large enough markets to get the countermeasures that we need.
I look forward to a chance to discuss this further in our
hearing.
Chairman Lieberman. Very interesting testimony.
Let me just go back to--as I begin my questioning--the $75
billion, to be clear. This, quite literally, is money that is
waiting for the right opportunities, correct?
Dr. Read. That is correct, Senator.
Chairman Lieberman. I must say, and I do not know whether
my colleagues on the Committee have found it--that since the
tragedy of September 11, you have a sense that there are people
in the private sector who have been active in relevant areas
and are rushing to see if there is some way they can do
business with the Federal Government, and that is part of the
genius of our system. Obviously, we have to be discriminating
customers, but it is a tremendous source of strength for us.
Obviously, the overall question we are asking here today is
how best to marshal our public and private scientific and
technological resources to aid us in the war against terrorism.
For us, this becomes, in some senses, a much less imaginative
but daunting challenge, nonetheless, which is where do we put
the boxes and how do we organize them with lines of
accountability and responsibility to make this work most
effectively and efficiently.
So the first question I want to ask is that in the
President's proposal, interestingly, they have combined in this
fourth section not only response to weapons of mass destruction
but, if you will, science and technological responses. For now,
I am wondering, why do that? In other words, why not take the
actual response to the weapons of mass destruction functions
and put it into the FEMA center division that both we and the
President create and then do something separate for the science
and technology.
I welcome contrary points of view, obviously. I wonder what
the panel's reaction, any of you, is to that. Dr. Branscomb, or
any of you?
Dr. Branscomb. I believe that the Committee's bill, S.
2452, is in many respects a cleaner--from a managerial point of
view, a cleaner structure than the President's. It clearly
identifies the whole collection of border issues, that is,
trying to control what comes in in the way of a threat, that
is, trying to prevent the threat from being realized. That is
one set of functions. And the other set of functions are those
that involve a response to an actual realization of a threat.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Dr. Branscomb. Those are two different things. I think you
have it sorted out just right.
I would comment that I found it very surprising that your
Borders Directorate does not have the Transportation Security
Administration from the Department of Transportation in it, but
that is really not an R&D organization. In some ways, I wish it
were. It has very little such capacity, but it is very much
concerned with the fact that we do not have a single border. We
have a very porous border. We live in a coupled world in global
economies and the border ends up wherever that container ends
up. So I think that unit needs to be in the program.
I am not happy with the notion that a number of specific
research capabilities outside, such as the NIS Computer
Security Division, would be picked up and moved into the
Division. It can be more effective where it is.
Chairman Lieberman. And which division is it moved into?
Dr. Branscomb. In the President's bill, I believe it is
moved into their first one, the Title II one.
Chairman Lieberman. Correct. Incidentally, two things. One
is that the President's bill did add the new Transportation
Security Agency to the border, the so-called ``prevent''
division, which we did not do. We did not do it because we
heard some disagreement, but also because the new
Transportation Security Agency was just being formed. Governor
Ridge spoke to me before the President and the administration
put out their bill and I told him then and I say it again, that
I think they did the right thing. TSA should be in the new
department.
Second, I hope members of the panel have gotten the sense,
that even though there are differences between the President's
bill and the Committee bill, we are really working in a
cooperative way now--without a lot of rigidity or pride of
authorship--to figure out from the various proposals which is
the best.
Any other responses to that? Yes, Dr. Madia.
Dr. Madia. Mr. Chairman, to me, there are two very
important issues on the question you asked. The first is
addressed in the President's bill. It clearly identifies the
cross-cutting nature of science and technology in that fourth
directorate, and so it is essential that that role be clear. We
are talking about the role. And so this is not an organization
dedicated just to weapons of mass destruction R&D, but it has
got a broad cross-cutting R&D function.
The second, and probably the more important factor, is who
you select for that position. Boxology is kind of nice, but the
actual person in that role, as mentioned by a previous
panelist, I think becomes the most important factor. Having an
R&D person with the kind of culture and understanding of how to
move science to technology to application will ultimately be
more important than the structure, in my opinion.
Chairman Lieberman. That is a good point. Yes, sir, Dr.
Read.
Dr. Read. Just a brief addition. It seems to me that there
are going to be opportunities to organize around the threat, as
well, rather than the boxology that reflects our current
governmental structure, and I would just urge, for example,
that there be a decisionmaker at a high enough level related to
the bio issues and a supporting panel at a high enough level
that that is not lost. In some ways, there may be good models
from the military that could be borrowed there in terms of----
Chairman Lieberman. Say a little more about that, in terms
of organizing for the threat.
Dr. Read. What I have in mind is that, and particularly
with respect to engaging the private sector, I think that the
nature of the problems are quite diverse. In fact, going back
to an early discussion, it may be time to retire the term
``weapons of mass destruction'' because it is so confusing.
There are very important issues related to bio that may be
unique to bio. And while the management of science and
management of research and some of that infrastructure is
common, I think having people who are really the right experts
for chem and nuclear sitting in on those discussions is not an
efficient use of resources and that we ought to be able to
concentrate the prioritization within bio. The interaction with
the private sector and this huge task of coordinating all the
places in the government should be concentrated at a high
enough level that it is really meaningful by the specific
threat.
Chairman Lieberman. Good point. Again, I think from my
point, I am going to try to stop using the term ``weapons of
mass destruction.'' It takes a little more time to say
chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear, but as we
learned on September 11, a plane can be a weapon of mass
destruction.
Dr. Hamburg.
Dr. Hamburg. I just wanted to add that while I recognize
there are enormous pressures to move swiftly to create this new
Department, there is a strong argument to be made, as my
colleague, Dr. Branscomb did, that we really need a strategic
framework as we shape this new Department, really defining the
goals and objectives in the different arenas and the roles and
responsibilities of the various component departments and
agencies and also recognizing that, in addressing this problem,
how the private sector and voluntary organizations interact is
also key to a comprehensive and ultimately effective approach.
Perhaps it is a timid proposal, but perhaps one can do this
effort in a somewhat incremental way, really focusing first on
consolidating those programs, policies, and activities that
clearly support a set of well-defined homeland security
missions and concerns, the border security, Customs activities,
some of the law enforcement and emergency response activities.
Recognize that some of the science and technology and
research enterprises that we have been discussing really need
to be closely embedded in the technical and scientific
expertise that resides within a broader range of departments
and that we need to be careful about disrupting many of those
activities, including the public health activities that I
discussed in my oral testimony. Coordination and accountability
are key to making integrated, coherent, and comprehensive
strategy in this area.
Actually moving the component pieces, taking away the
money, giving it back to micromanage within those departments
and other strategies that have been proposed may not ultimately
be the most effective approach, and so in those arenas, we may
want to first establish a much more structured coordination and
accountability mechanism and then make decisions about how to
move some of the actual pieces into an organizational
structure.
Chairman Lieberman. That is helpful. My time is up, but Dr.
Branscomb, do you want to say a quick word?
Dr. Branscomb. I just want to say there are three serious
problems with the President's proposal for how to organize the
R&D in the Department. The first is that I believe it is
totally unmanageable to give one of the four operating
executives in the Department not only the responsibility for
this enormously important problem of nuclear weapons and
biological warfare and chemical warfare, they are also assigned
by law and R&D function in support of those problems, and then
they are also assigned an R&D function in support of the whole
Department.
They are never going to be able to make those trade-offs
between their R&D obligations to their own operational mission.
Nobody will ever be satisfied they have done enough against
those threats, and they simply will not do it for the rest of
the Department.
The second problem is that the people you would most like
to have doing that work on the nuclear problem and on the
biological problem are the scientists at Livermore
Laboratories. Those are wonderfully brainy people, very smart,
long record of worrying about security. I do not think there is
a one out there who has a clue what a fireman needs and can
use. What if you give it to the fireman and he tries it and it
does not work? He throws it down and says, ``I have been
fighting fires all my life. I am just going to go do it.'' That
is the spirit of our first responders, and the R&D has to be
very sensitive to the nature of those people's real
requirements.
The third problem is that even if that Title III division
did not have this conflict of mission problem, you still have
the problem that you have got four operating executives sitting
at the table, one of whom is also the corporate R&D manager. I
do not think that works either. I think there has to be a
corporate R&D manager, which, indeed, your bill provides.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks. That is very helpful. Senator
Cleland.
Senator Cleland. Yes, sir. Thank you very much, Mr.
Chairman. What a fascinating series of hearings we have had. I
hope the American people are tuning in and listening. As Dr.
Madia has indicated, this is one of those key turning points,
moments, or pivotal times when the country has been shocked
and--or from Aldous--if you like my quotes, here is one more.
Aldous Huxley, the great British author, said, ``Experience is
not what happens to a man, it is what a man does with what
happens to him.''
So here we are. We know what happened to us, and part of
this Governmental Affairs challenge here on this Committee is
to figure out now what we do about it, and there are lots of
ideas.
But I will say, Dr. Branscomb, that I have often thought,
coming from a very small town where I know the firemen and the
policemen and the EMS people by name, and their dog and their
cat---- [Laughter.]
Senator Cleland [continuing]. That unless homeland security
works at the hometown level, it is not going to work. So I
think that is part of our challenge.
I do favor the Homeland Security Department, but I think it
has ultimately hometown mission. That is the bottom line for it
to work there.
I will say, Dr. Read, that if you know where you can lay
your hands on $75 billion, you can buy ImClone, you can buy
WorldCom---- [Laughter.]
Senator Cleland [continuing]. You can buy Tyco, you can buy
Enron cheap---- [Laughter.]
Senator Cleland [continuing]. And save the American
economy. I just thought I would throw that out there for you.
[Laughter.]
Dr. Hamburg, I would like for you to think about this. The
GAO has pointed out about the President's proposal that the
proposal does not sufficiently clarify the lines of authority
of different parties in the event of an emergency, such as
between the FBI, and public health officials investigating a
suspected bioterrorism incident. This is exactly what we went
through with the anthrax attack.
Again, the CDC, the bug FBI, was called into the case and
they identified the bug quickly. Then the FBI itself was called
in, shut down the crime scene, and in many ways, the CDC and
the FBI then competed for their own piece of the pie, I guess,
and there were two competing interests. The FBI is basically
the law enforcement agency. As we saw in testimony yesterday,
it is basically an 11,000-person law enforcement agency which
is involved in secrecy, which is involved in non-dissemination
of information, and probably building a court case over a long
period of time.
An agency like the CDC is a public health agency that is
interested in responding quickly to emergencies and getting
information out, disseminating information quickly in order to
prevent either further attacks or to deal with an attack
underway. So two competing interests here.
Again, the President's proposal has the CDC, for
bioterrorism purposes, responding policy-wise to the Secretary
of Homeland Security. But for operational purposes, I guess
rations and quarters as we used to call it in the military, to
the Secretary of HHS. I wonder if you feel that is a problem.
One of the ways I would solve it is create a center at the
CDC, not move these wonderful people out who have wonderful
synergy with the other public health officials in the other
centers, but create a center at the CDC. Because 34 percent of
the CDC's work now has to do with bioterrorism, except it is,
OK, you do this for a few hours and you do this over here.
There is no real dedicated center. You have got a lot of
experts, but there is not a dedicated center to that focused on
it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, that then is, in effect, the
Center of Excellence for what you do to prepare for a
biological attack and what you do to respond to it.
If you had the center, then I think that dual master
responsibility would work for policy, the Homeland Security.
For administration, operational purposes, coordination with the
other elements of the CDC, you would answer to HHS and the
public health interests in there. Do you see this dichotomy
creating problems, or is this the way to go?
Dr. Hamburg. I think that your question really gets to the
heart of the fact, as I discussed in my testimony, that the
biological threat is different and it is intrinsically embedded
in the broader threat of preventing and controlling infectious
disease threats. The CDC is really a unique national and
international resource in terms of expertise and leadership in
the area of infectious disease prevention and control and I do
believe that we need to ensure that it is adequately supported
in its activities that are broadly based and that we do not
start to cut up the pieces, labeling some as bioterrorism
preparedness and others as infectious disease control.
The anthrax letters that were disseminated last fall in
some ways were misleading for what a bioterrorism attack might
look like. I do not think the next time we see anthrax powder
it will be delivered in a letter with a note saying, ``This is
anthrax. Take penicillin.'' Most likely, there will be a silent
release and without a fortuitous discovery or an announcement
by the perpetrator. We will not even know that an attack has
occurred until individuals start to appear in doctors' offices,
emergency rooms, or intensive care units, now spread out in
time and place from the initial site of release.
We will not know whether it is a naturally occurring
outbreak or an intentionally caused event in many of the
scenarios that are likely or might potentially occur.
Therefore, we need to have a well-coordinated and certainly
well-funded and adequately supported infectious disease
detection investigation and response capability and CDC is
clearly our Nation's agency to lead that effort.
Senator Cleland. And clearly, that is the key. Who is the
go-to person when something like this happens? Other agencies
are involved. Initially, I had legislation that said that, yes,
based on the Presidential directive in 1995, the FBI in terms
of a terrorist attack was the lead agency. In 1998, the
Congress says CDC is the lead agent in terms of a bioterrorist
attack.
I resolved that dilemma by legislation saying that the
Secretary of HHS, in effect, had the power by the stroke of a
pen to declare a national public health emergency and then,
boom, the CDC would automatically be the lead agent. Maybe it
should be the Secretary of HHS. Maybe it should be the
Secretary of Homeland Security. I do not know, but the point
is, there seems to be a threshold here in a terrorist attack
that all of a sudden you realize, hey, this is not just a
naturally occurring outbreak here. We have got a problem, and
we had better get on it.
So I think there is a threshold level there where,
ultimately, the experts, the 8,500 scientists and experts that
deal with this are keyed in as the lead agent. That is why I am
such a big advocate for a center.
Dr. Read. This is a very constructive observation that you
have made about localizing that. I have worked with the CDC
quite a bit in connection with a company developing a new flu
vaccine. One of the most unique clubs in medicine are these
doctors who wear these neckties or scarves with a picture of a
shoe with a hole in the bottom. These are the guys and women
who have served in the epidemiologic intelligence service who
are the first responders to investigate. We really have two
classes of events that actually call, I think, for very
different skill sets and responsibilities.
Most of the white powder episodes, we are not going to know
whether it is a disease or a false alarm, an influenza epidemic
coming around, and it is going to require that kind of medical
detective work and the huge, competent laboratory back-up that
our current CDC provides.
At some point in the future, someone will make the
discovery that flips a switch and says, this is not a naturally
occurring disease. This is a terrorist attack. And there will
be the need for criminal law enforcement investigatory work,
but more urgently, and especially if it is a transmissible
agent, this is a whole different category than what we faced
with anthrax, a completely different category.
We are going to face some really tough new issues that we
should be preparing for now. The quarantine that must be
enforced, and let us face it, it is a military operation, our
National Guard, our police function, and maybe even our regular
military are going to be involved.
This is not part of the culture of the current CDC, so we
need to think about different phases, sort of the screening and
the public health role that they do so well, and maybe that is
the right place to put that center for after the switch has
been flipped, but it is a different set of skills and
responsibilities and I just urge careful thought about putting
them in that role, in a police and quarantine role. We are
going to face some very tough challenges as a society when that
happens and we can minimize the pain by really thinking it
through in advance.
Senator Cleland. I think that is the point. I think that is
one of the reasons for the hearings that we have had is to
establish the--is it your understanding the best thing we can
do is establish the protocol? Work these kind of relationships
out before the popcorn hits the fan? Because we really did not
have those relationships spelled out. Agencies just kind of
reacted to the anthrax thing and a bunch of agencies got their
fingers in the pie and----
Dr. Read. They did not do that bad of a job, by the way.
Senator Cleland. Right, but there was a lot of
miscommunication up front and early, and who speaks for the
government and who does not. Dr. Madia.
Dr. Madia. From the national lab perspective, we would
support your idea of the Centers of Excellence because it does
deal with the fundamental question you asked. It allows the
laboratories, or CDC, in your case, to retain its own organic
capability, the people, the infrastructure, the community that
is necessary to do that. Yet, it gives DHHS a single point of
contact to focus on that problem.
So what the Department is planning through its
implementation is to establish these Centers of Excellence in
the various national laboratories to meet your model. In our
opinion, that would be applicable to other agencies who have
major assets to bring to bear on this.
Senator Cleland. Thank you very much. Dr. Hamburg, my time
is up. Go ahead.
Dr. Hamburg. I just wanted to underscore what Dr. Read had
said and I certainly did not want to leave the impression that
I thought the CDC could or should be in charge of the law
enforcement/criminal investigation activities. But the
challenge of responding to the threat of bioterrorism very much
requires that these different cultures and agencies with
different missions figure out ahead of time how they are going
to relate to each other and how they can support each other's
distinct missions in pursuit of a common goal. However, when
you are dealing with control of a disease epidemic, one must be
sure that the needs for disease control are clearly understood
and that the criminal investigation activities do not undermine
the ability of public health agencies and medical professionals
to actually do everything they can in a swift and timely way to
control spread of disease, treat individuals who are affected,
and provide preventive therapy to those who have been exposed
and are not yet sick.
I think that those activities can occur in a coordinated
way, but it really depends on intensive planning and practice
so that in a crisis, we are not thinking through these issues
for the first time.
Senator Cleland. Thank you very much, a key point, Mr.
Chairman. My time is up. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Cleland. That was a
very important exchange and you gave me another quote, which I
think might be your own, ``before the popcorn hits the fan.''
It is a good one. [Laughter.]
Senator Akaka.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Hamburg, I particularly am interested in how we can
bring things together to deal with the problem of bioterrorism.
Two months before September 11, I chaired a hearing on Federal
response capabilities to bioterrorism. There were three
underlying concerns. First, the medical and hospital community
needs to be more engaged in bioterrorism planning. Second, the
partnership between medical and public health professionals
needs to be strengthened. And third, hospitals must have the
resources to develop surge capabilities. At that time, we
talked about them halving their staffs, and what has happened
to their surge response capabilities.
My question to you is do you believe we are better off 1
year later, and have the concerns raised at our hearing been
met?
Dr. Hamburg. I believe that we are better prepared today
than we have been in the past to address the threat of
bioterrorism, but there is still an enormous amount that we
need to do and we need to do it swiftly.
I think that there are several critical elements of a
comprehensive national strategy to prevent and respond to
bioterrorism. Certainly, the most desirable strategy is to
prevent an event from occurring in the first place and there is
more than we can do, although steps have been taken to secure
dangerous materials and to make sure that dangerous pathogens
are only used in legitimate government, industry, and academic
laboratories. So there are things we need to do to improve
biosecurity.
Clearly, we need to strengthen the public health
infrastructure, including the on-the-ground disease
surveillance, investigation, and response capabilities, the
laboratories needed to support those efforts, and the
communication of information to all who need it. Those disease
surveillance capabilities, depend very heavily upon the
partnership between medicine and public health.
We need to make sure that our medical system can surge in
response to either a bioterrorism attack or any other
catastrophic event that will involve mass casualties, and the
current competitive environment in which the health care system
operates has led to very significant downsizing of our health
care capabilities and even a mild flu season can overwhelm our
health care facilities, let alone a catastrophic terrorist
event. So we need to really put enormous resources and
attention to that problem and look at how we can plan to
support surge, looking at local capabilities and how those
could be augmented by State and Federal resources.
We also do need to have a continuing focus on research
because that lays the foundation for future preparedness and
that needs to involve better basic understandings of the
organisms that might be threats and how the human body responds
to those threats. We need to look at threats to plants and
animals as well. We need to develop new strategies for rapid
detection, new drugs, vaccines, and we also need to look at
what we sometimes call systems research. We need to better
understand issues about environmental safety and
decontamination. We need to know more about how you make
buildings safe through improved ventilation systems, what kinds
of masks are really effective, etc.
So there are, I think, a number of critical domains. In
many of those areas, we have established effective programs.
Most of those programs need to be quite significantly
strengthened and extended, and in some areas, we are still at
ground zero in terms of developing the policies and putting in
place the programs that are needed.
Senator Akaka. Dr. Read, as I mentioned in my statement,
the private sector has much to offer in fighting the war on
terrorism. In your experience, what has been the greatest
challenge for private researchers and small businesses to
become involved in homeland security countermeasures efforts?
Dr. Read. Senator, as you mentioned in your opening
remarks, there are so many stories of people that try and
figure out who in the government they should go talk to to get
feedback on whether their plan or their invention or their
ideas are useful. We desperately need to identify the
clearinghouse. It even has to start before that. There has to
be a decisionmaker who has to have a strategy, and out of that
strategy there have to be priorities, and those priorities have
to be coupled with resources so that we can create incentives
so that then the clearinghouse can actually do the work of
starting to produce the outputs that we need. So we have a lot
of work to do. I think this Department is going to help. So
finding the go-to person, that is a big part.
The other really important part, and as a venture
capitalist now, I have one of the most wonderful jobs in the
world. I see entrepreneurs, inventors, college professors, and
best of all, former entrepreneurs who have been successful who
really know how it works and help them think about business
plans that we might want to invest in. When we invest, we
always get very involved in helping them build their
businesses.
And right now, if somebody said, look at this terrific
vaccine for Ebola, I really think we can do it, we have really
figured it out, we have had this key insight, just to pick an
example, but it could be a diagnostic or a drug, or better yet,
some system where you could respond in the midst of an
epidemic, to respond to some brand new threat, some kind of
research tool, and we want to build this thing.
Then when they get to the market estimate side of their
business plan, you know, the worst thing you can put in a
business plan for a venture capitalist is, ``If we build it,
they will come.'' There has to be some conviction. There has to
be some evidence that whenever you built something like this,
they did come.
Well, we do not have that track record right now. There is
no biodefense industry--just to pick the bio area--right now
because there is no market for a biodefense industry if it were
successful, and that can be addressed.
So I think those are the two biggest issues, where do you
get feedback and guidance, what the heck are their priorities,
and then if we did hit the target, met the specification and
built just what we need, who would be there to buy it?
Senator Akaka. You are correct. I meet with people who come
to ask, where do we go, who do we see? They hear that funding
is available but are not sure how to apply for it. These are
the important questions if we are going to ensure we have the
technology to address the problems.
You and I raised the idea of a clearinghouse. We need a
Research and Development Outreach Office that encourages
contributions from small businesses and nontraditional
contractors. Do you believe that such a clearinghouse should be
placed in the Department of Homeland Security?
Dr. Read. I believe that the new Department is the place
where the private sector should be able to ask their questions
and get real answers about whether they are working on the
high-priority stuff and whether there will be markets there.
Whether we call it a clearinghouse or not, I will leave that to
you. But I do think that the function that you have described
the need for and I commented on has to exist in this new
Department.
Senator Akaka. Dr. Hamburg and Ms. Heinrich, I am concerned
that Hawaii's first responders and State and local authorities
nationwide do not have access to reliable and timely
information from Federal authorities regarding terrorism.
My question is, what kind of information do public health
and emergency managers need, and what would be the best way to
distribute this information in an effective and secure manner?
Dr. Heinrich.
Ms. Heinrich. I think that at this juncture, the CDC
programs to provide assistance to the States, in fact, not only
help build the infrastructure for reporting of diseases from
the State and local areas to the Federal Government, they are
also building communications systems so that information can go
from the Federal Government quickly down to the State and local
area and also to physicians and emergency rooms.
We found out from our experiences with anthrax, for
example, that there was not a clear message from the Federal
Government about what the threat was and also what the possible
treatment should be, or if somebody thought they were exposed,
what they were to do. I think that with the programs now put in
place from CDC, there is a real opportunity to correct those
problems.
I do want to add on to what Dr. Hamburg said before,
though, about State and local preparedness, which includes
Hawaii. We are not there yet. Certainly, we are much more
aware, but in our work in doing an assessment of State and
local preparedness and also in our work right now on assessing
emergency room crowding, we are finding that the people at the
local level are planning. They are making assessments, or they
will be making assessments of their needs.
They are not necessarily yet in the implementation mode and
I just think that is really important for us to understand as
we are trying to develop new policies and consolidate programs.
We really do need to understand that our best information is
going to be coming from the State and local areas and they
still need a lot of assistance in bringing their systems up to
where they need to be.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Chairman, I know my time has run out,
but I have another question or two.
Chairman Lieberman. Go right ahead, Senator Akaka. We have
got time.
Senator Akaka. Let me ask a question to Dr. Madia. The
President's proposal states, ``the technologies developed must
not only make us safer but also make our lives better. While
protecting against the rare event, they should also enhance the
commonplace.''
Dr. Madia, do you believe the Department of Homeland
Security can reduce everyday low-consequence risks while
focusing on catastrophic terrorism?
Dr. Madia. That is a very important question, because as a
Nation and as a Department, it is unfortunate, but we cannot
protect against every threat, every day, of every consequence,
and that is a reality we have to deal with in this country. I
know we would like to be able to deal with that and give the
public 100 percent assurance that low-consequence, low-profile
events will be taken care of, but that is simply not the fact.
That cannot happen.
So no department can do that because it would take
unlimited resources to do that. So functionally, the answer has
to be, of course, we could. But operationally and practically,
it is never going to happen that way. One of the sad problems
we face as a Nation right now is that there are lots of
localized low-consequence events that this Department or any
construct of government will not be able to deal with.
Dr. Read. Could I just comment on that?
Senator Akaka. Please.
Dr. Read. First of all, I would urge that the mission for
this new Department be really clear and that we not saddle it
with traffic safety, which is, of course, much bigger on an
annual basis, current harm to our population than the
actualized terrorist attacks, but we should keep the mission as
clear as we can.
But we should also look for the opportunities, which will
be many, I believe, to exploit the beneficial dual use of
investments in technology and infrastructure. When we improve
our infrastructure, for example, I was at a meeting of some
California public health officials soon after September 11 and
we had public health officers exchanging cell phone numbers
with fire officials. These people did not have them. The
databases did not exist for that.
So creating infrastructure to deal with a rapid response to
detect certain kind of attacks like bio and more obvious
attacks, we are going to create infrastructures that absolutely
help us with the day-to-day, with emergency response and that
very important network. That is going to be a consequence.
The technology we build in the form of new drugs and
vaccines and new research tools will undoubtedly have spin-off
results in some cases. We have to be prepared to do the stuff
that does not, as well.
So I see a lot of benefit, but I would not want to in any
way saddle the mission with anything other than a really clear
focus on this newly recognized and focused problem of homeland
security.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Chairman, I have one final question.
Chairman Lieberman. Please, go right ahead.
Senator Akaka. Since we are talking about communication,
Dr. Hamburg, as a public health official, you know the
important role that veterinarians play in disease control. How
do we increase communication among the Nation's veterinarians,
medical doctors, and public health officials? Even more
important, and let me ask this question, would the President's
proposal do this?
Dr. Hamburg. I think, as we have learned from many
naturally occurring events and now thinking about the threat of
bioterrorism, we recognize that we have been too stovepiped in
approaches and that we really need to engage the veterinary
community. Particularly with respect to bioterrorism, many of
the diseases, the pathogens of greatest concern are, in fact,
animal diseases that can affect humans. And in addition, we
certainly know that even without the loss of one human life,
the enormous disruption and economic devastation that could
occur from an attack on animals or crops would be a very
effective strategy for a determined terrorist.
So we need to look at it. We need to broaden our thinking.
I think you asked me before, are we better prepared? I think in
most elements of response to bioterrorism, we have been moving
forward. We are not anywhere near where we need to be. But one
of the areas where we have lagged the furthest behind is
engaging on the threats of agricultural terrorism and it needs
to be a major priority.
In terms of engaging the veterinary medicine community in
particular, it starts with awareness. They need information.
They need to be brought into existing systems and programs.
They need to be at the table when the others are at the table
discussing this problem and we need to develop the working
relationships and situational awareness that will allow for a
more comprehensive approach.
Senator Akaka. Thank you, I just wanted to inject that the
terrorist threat is also to our livestock.
Ms. Heinrich, as Dr. Madia has said, we are faced with new
risks. We cannot protect ourselves from every threat that
comes. How do we make the general public aware of this new
reality while maintaining their confidence?
Ms. Heinrich. I think this is a role that public health
officials can play in terms of educating the public and making
sure that we have programs that help people understand what are
the real risks, and what are the potential threats. It is not
easy, because I think the messages are complicated. I think
that people really do need to understand that infectious
diseases are real, emerging infectious diseases are real and
that they need to be aware of their pet's health as well as the
health of themselves and their children and they need to know
that it is no longer just the chronic diseases that we need to
be concerned about but that we do need to be thinking about
infectious diseases. And they need information on what to do,
what they should do in terms of seeing their physician or
primary care provider or the need to even go to the emergency
room.
In response to your question to Dr. Hamburg, I think it is
important for us to understand that, again, in the President's
proposal, there are some efforts there to bring in some aspects
of the Department of Agriculture and there is discussion of
food safety, which, of course, involves veterinary health. But
again, you have to ask yourself the question, or we have to ask
ourselves the question if the approach that is used is
necessarily the best one to make sure that you have the
coordination of effort that you want.
I would just emphasize again that the real critical
components are that you have that strategic plan and that you
do have the opportunity for risk assessment, but there are a
variety of methods for coordination of these overarching
scientific programs.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Chairman, you have been very generous
with the time, and I thank you and our witnesses.
Chairman Lieberman. Not at all.
Senator Akaka. I will submit my other questions.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Akaka. I appreciate
your questions very much. I do have a few more questions
myself. Let me come back to what one of you nicely called the
boxology part of this, because that is where our work begins,
but hopefully, our work and the work of the government does not
end there.
One of the key questions raised is--assuming for a moment,
we set up a Science and Technology Office in the new
Department--what comes under it and where the funding streams
go. The administration's proposal kicked up a fair amount of
dust and anxiety by seeming in the first instance to take all
of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and put it into the
Department, and then parts of NIH. As it turned out, as there
has been clarification or adjustment, it seems that part of
Lawrence Livermore and NIH are involved. Specifically, while
the money for the personnel and the research goes through the
Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Office,
the people stay at the laboratory and NIH.
I still think there is a lot of anxiety, certainly, from
members of the Senate who are close to, for example, these two
institutions or agencies, NIH and Livermore. I wanted to ask
you, so far as any of you want to respond, and we could begin
with Dr. Madia, since you represent another laboratory, what
your reaction is.
The other alternative here clearly is not to do that and to
create an additional funding stream, an agency--I am calling it
SARPA--within the Homeland Security Department which would set
the goals and agenda for science and technology with regard to
homeland security, have additional funding, hopefully, of its
own, but not in any sense move personnel or money from the
existing agencies.
So I want to invite your reaction to both of those, Dr.
Branscomb, and then we will come right back to Dr. Madia.
Dr. Branscomb. Thank you. As I said earlier, I think what
is essential when we are looking at the R&D activities, that
the technical talent for the moment, at least--and by moment, I
mean the next year or two, until this Department is a reality
and can function, in fact, stay where it is.
The key to being able to do that is, in fact, to ensure
that it can be funded where it is and that the agency undertake
commitments, program commitments, that are responsive to a
technical strategy for homeland security. The Department should
be the principal origin for that strategy. But since the
strategy clearly calls for other departments of the government
to commit their resources or their people, their talents and
their capabilities to the effort, that decision has to get made
at the Executive Office of the President level.
And I would like, if I may, to comment on the proposal in
your bill to create a National Office for Combating Terrorism,
because you have not only identified the necessity for that
strategy being constructed, you have, in fact, equipped this
statutory office with quite a number of authorities which would
ensure, if it were accepted, it would ensure that it had a
major role in the preparation of this governmentwide budget for
counterterrorism which OMB then would have to work into the
rest of the government program.
I suspect that there will be people, OMB executives present
and former, who will object to that much legislative effort in
the budget process in the White House, but I think you are
absolutely after the right goal. I would call attention to the
fact that the President's bill makes no mention whatever of how
a national strategy is going to be put together that would
engage on line items, budget items, at Commerce, at NIH, at
Energy, where they commit to do things, to give reports to the
Department, but they have got the money, they are responsible
for it, and they know how to spend the money fruitfully.
I suspect the reason why the President's bill does not
contain any mention of that is because the President did, in
fact, when he announced his intention to promote the
Department, noted there would still need to be an Office of
Homeland Security at the White House.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Dr. Branscomb. And, indeed, he recognizes that. I also
suspect that he did not put it in the bill because he does not
want it to be a legislated office.
Chairman Lieberman. That is also correct. That is clear.
Dr. Branscomb. Because he can appoint it without having to
have Congress's permission.
Chairman Lieberman. Right, no advice and consent or a
requirement to testify before Congress.
Dr. Branscomb. But my concern is that because it is not
mentioned--also, there is very little in the President's bill
about how that global strategy would even be worked on in the
Department. But I think that capability is crucial to not
seizing the research capability and putting it in the--all of
it and trying to put it in the Department.
Chairman Lieberman. Dr. Madia.
Dr. Madia. Mr. Chairman, when I heard you initially
describe the SARPA concept, what immediately came to mind was
this Homeland Security Center at Livermore, which is intended
to be a DARPA-like organization. It would understand the needs
of the various customers of this agency and would fund, like
DARPA does, research at various institutions, including the
laboratories, bring that back and provide that to the Nation.
So I did not hear from a functional standpoint much difference
between----
Chairman Lieberman. That is interesting. So you would say
that part of Livermore might do what we are thinking----
Dr. Madia. As far as I understand what is in this proposal,
functionally, when you were speaking this morning, that is what
immediately came to mind.
And from an R&D provider standpoint, that is very common.
National laboratories work across the full range of government.
Our customers include DOD, DOE, EPA, NASA, HHS, CDC, and so
there are already providers which are scattered around the
country, are ready, willing, and able, as Senator Akaka
mentioned, to bring their talents to bear on this problem. What
they need, as Dr. Read pointed out, was a single point of
contact, whether it is SARPA or the proposed Center at
Livermore, to me, that meets that functional need.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Dr. Madia. The second point of your question, it was not as
if government was not doing anything at all on homeland
security. Spread across government agencies, including the
Department of Energy, were certain programs that one would look
at from a national perspective and say, this looks like a
counterterrorism or a bioterrorism or a counter-nuclear weapons
activity, and those kinds of transfers, I think now are
appropriate, because they would be core, programmatically, core
to this new Department, in whatever incarnation it ends up.
There are many places where there is a dual-technology
application, where the benefit would go to CDC and DHS. In my
opinion, those are best left in their home institutions through
these Centers of Excellence we talked about earlier with
Senator Cleland.
Chairman Lieberman. Dr. Branscomb, the Committee which just
made its report earlier this week recommended the creation of a
Homeland Security Institute. Now, why have another institution
different from the Science and Technology Office, however it is
constructed, that we are talking about in the new Department of
Homeland Security?
Dr. Branscomb. The reason is that this supposed institute
supports the decisionmaking, the strategic decisionmaking by
the chief technical officer and the Secretary and Deputy
Secretary of the Department. It plays exactly the same role--
for Homeland Security that organizations like Mitre
Corporation, Aerospace Corporation, Project Rare Force at RAND,
the Institute for Defense Analysis play in support of defense.
These are all contractor-operated dedicated facilities to a
single customer. They work only for that customer. And what
they do is systems analysis, they analyze the problems. These
are very complex systems problems.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Dr. Branscomb. When you look at infrastructure and its
vulnerabilities, one section of the infrastructure, if it
collapses brings down the next one. These are complex problems
and setting the priorities is not a trivial problem. And
indeed, if the industry comes in and says, ``I have got a great
idea, is there a market for it in the government?'' You cannot
answer that question unless you have done this kind of systems
analytic work.
So it does not need to be a very big organization. I would
guess 200 to 300 people. We did not try to size it
specifically. But I think that the authority to create it is
absolutely essential.
Chairman Lieberman. OK. That helps me understand it better.
Let me go back to the dialogue with Senator Cleland, and I
want to direct the question first to Dr. Hamburg, but Ms.
Heinrich and others may have an opinion on it. As you know, the
Department of Health and Human Services responded to last
year's anthrax attacks by forming the Office of Public Health
Preparedness, which coordinates all departmental efforts to
combat terrorism within HHS, including managing the public
health care required during an attack and directing research
efforts to fight bioterrorism.
The President's proposal would transfer this entire office
to the new Department. I wanted to ask you all, and first Dr.
Hamburg, based on your personal experience, what you think of
the idea, particularly given the dual role of the office to
manage public health readiness and advise the Secretary on
biomedical research issues. Can it operate effectively outside
of HHS?
Dr. Hamburg. I think that the creation of an Office of
Public Health Preparedness within HHS was a very important and
appropriate step. Actually, it was a recommendation of the
outgoing administration to create such an office, recognizing
that there really needed to be much more focused attention and
coordination on issues of public health preparedness,
particularly bioterrorism. Also there was a requirement--just
as we have been talking about with respect to the creation of a
Department of Homeland Security--to make sure that all of the
components of response and preparedness for HHS were, in fact,
being addressed; that there was a strategic framework and that
someone was accountable for making sure that there was a
comprehensive, integrated program, and that budget priorities
reflected that strategic framework. The best way to do that was
with an Office of Public Health Preparedness so that the needs
of CDC, NIH, FDA, and other important components of HHS
responsibility and public health preparedness and response
could all be addressed and accounted for.
Taking that and moving it lock, stock, and barrel to a
Department of Homeland Security, I think is problematic because
it will disconnect many important functions that have broader
public health preparedness roles from those that are more
directly related to bioterrorism preparedness. That is of
enormous concern to me, because of my bias that I have stated
here that, really, the only way to effectively address these
concerns is to think about the continuum of infectious disease
threats with bioterrorism being at the extreme end.
Certainly, there are elements of public health preparedness
and response that are cross-cutting. The needs to support mass
casualty care are very important to integrate closely with the
functions of a new Department of Homeland Security, for
example. And so I think that there are components of the HHS
public health preparedness response that can be pulled out and
integrated into a new Department of Homeland Security, but I
think one has to take a very systematic look at those elements
and the functions they support and where they can best be
housed.
If this new Department of Homeland Security is effectively
defining homeland security quite broadly, and I think this is
one of the dilemmas that you face, then those functions could
find a comfortable and natural home. If all of FEMA is now part
of the new Department of Homeland Security so that the
emergency response functions of FEMA are all being managed
within that new Department, then I think you really almost need
to integrate some of those components from HHS into that
framework. But I think that the elements that support the
public health infrastructure and response at the national,
State, and local level are much harder to label as, this is
bioterrorism related or this is homeland security related and
move it, because it is part of a much more broad-based and
complex system for public health in this Nation.
Chairman Lieberman. That is a very helpful answer.
Let me take us beyond the boxology now into what this is
all about, which is maybe to give us a little bit of a sense of
what science and technology can, in the years ahead, do to help
us in the war against terrorism.
I am going to start with you, Dr. Madia. Actually, Senator
Thompson left a few questions for you. Most of them have been
asked, but this one has not and it is a good way to lead in and
then I will go to Dr. Read or anyone else who wants to comment.
First, if you can describe some of the work being done at
Oak Ridge now that either is already related to homeland
security or might be in the next couple of years.
Dr. Madia. I thank you. Your question can be answered in
three basic time domains, what we can do today and has been
done today, an intermediate term, and a long term. Fortunately,
there is a lot of activity today that is directly applicable to
homeland security.
In a really exciting program that connects both the
laboratory and private sector in Oak Ridge, we are developing a
concept called SensorNet. SensorNet literally uses the existing
cell phone tower infrastructure, which is ubiquitous across the
United States. Those towers in public buildings and post
offices have an interesting capability that we do not think of
in terms of homeland security. They have the power and the
telemetry necessary to transmit early warnings to first
responders on a very, very short time frame.
We have successfully demonstrated this technology now both
in Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville, Tennessee, where you
just hang on cell phone towers chemical, biological, nuclear
detectors, and they are just prolific. You tend not to see
them, but they are in high population densities.
Chairman Lieberman. You mean they are constantly sending
out reports over the system?
Dr. Madia. Senator, what we found is that these towers are
in constant contact with emergency operations centers used by
the private sector in their normal cell phone communication,
full diagnostics. If you would break into a cell phone tower,
it is known immediately at the emergency operation centers by
these cell phone companies. They are in constant contact,
literally.
So, therefore, if you hang a radiological sensors on a
downtown cell phone tower and it begins to pick up a mass
release, very quickly, you can begin to transmit, not to
national lab folks, but to first responders, something is
happening in downtown Washington. Here is the meteorological
data, which is also available on those towers. Here is the
evacuation path.
So there is a lot of very near-term, actually quite
pedestrian technologies that are, in fact, available today for
deployment, and these are some of the concepts the new
Department needs to look at as it does its triage on the
thousands of ideas in front of it.
Chairman Lieberman. That is a great idea. Let me make sure
I understand. The radiological testing device or sensor would
immediately convey a report. It is not just that something went
off, it would send----
Dr. Madia. It gives you a concentration----
Chairman Lieberman [continuing]. Some data across the
wires, or across the wireless.
Dr. Madia. The reason I used the radiation example is
because in those cases, the sensor technology is far more
sophisticated there than you have in the chemical and the
biological arenas. So you do not have such ability to give you
such absolute accurate information on the biological side as
you do primarily on the chemical and nuclear side.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Dr. Hamburg. Can I just interject? I may have
misunderstood, but I think it would be a very dangerous concept
to pursue sensors that would immediately send information about
a possible attack to first responders. There needs to be a
mechanism to assess the quality of the information, whether it
is radiological, chemical, or biological detection, and
confirms that the threat is real and verified and then provides
the first responders the information that they need for how to
respond.
Certainly, you want to get quick information that is an
early warning that something may be out there, but I think the
goal is not to create a system that sort of immediately beams
information out without any quality control. We know certainly
from the anthrax experience that our technologies just are not
there. Maybe some day that would be great, and certainly going
into a threat situation, you want first responders to be
equipped with something that will tell them of a possible
threat so they can protect themselves, but----
Chairman Lieberman. Yes. But you are saying that----
Dr. Madia. Dr. Hamburg's comments are actually correct.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Dr. Madia. When the demonstrations were actually done in
Tennessee, the information first went to the Tennessee
Emergency Operations Center, and then was qualified by the EOC
directors of the State. Then they went through the first
responder alert.
Chairman Lieberman. But the important point you are stating
is that here is a resource that you could build on to----
Dr. Madia. The Federal Government, by the way, could never
invest in it. You would never rebuild the national cell phone
tower network, with 30,000 towers around the country.
Chairman Lieberman. No, it is a good example. Anything
else?
Dr. Madia. That exists currently in the private sector and
this is a good partnership between government needs and private
sector needs, and so it is a good example for that.
Chairman Lieberman. Good idea.
Dr. Madia. But you are absolutely correct. You filter the
data, do the analysis, and do not just call some fire
department and say, go north.
Chairman Lieberman. Do you want to give us another example?
Dr. Madia. What you see on the energy side--one of our big
long-term problems is the fragility of the energy grid in this
country. It is taken down by natural events, quite often. Some
very interesting technology----
Chairman Lieberman. Do you consider Enron to be a natural
event? [Laughter.]
Dr. Madia. Unfortunately, it is a very unnatural event.
Chairman Lieberman. That is another part of this
Committee's work. We will leave it aside for now.
Dr. Madia. This whole concept of self-healing energy grids
is coming out of multiple national laboratories. If a main part
of the grid goes down, through smart technologies that run all
the way from the power stations to your refrigerator, they can
literally now begin to sense a problem on the grid as it is
occurring, can begin to shut down certain parts of the grid and
reroute power.
There are certain printers, I am sure you have in your
office, that today can sense an upcoming problem on the printer
for your computer and send a signal back to some command post
saying your printer is about to go out. Those same kind of
technologies are clearly deployable in our energy
infrastructure over the next 5 to 10 years. That is a really
long-term example of the kind of technologies that are
applicable.
Chairman Lieberman. Great. Dr. Madia.
Dr. Madia. One quick comment. A lot of our discussion today
has been about the bio threat, and I do not mean to diminish
the bio threat at all.
Chairman Lieberman. Sure.
Dr. Madia. But it would be a huge mistake for us to ignore
or not give sufficient attention to the nuclear threat. Now,
again, we are the national laboratories and we play a
substantial role there. But the unfortunate reality of nuclear
threats is the materials exist, the science exists, and the
technology exists. A weapon that could sit on this table could
completely devastate a major U.S. city.
And yes, we should talk about threats to agriculture,
chemical threats, biological threats, anthrax threats, but in
reality, this Department, I think this government, has to deal
with the extraordinary consequences possible if a terrorist
coming out of a country that has the assets available tries to
deploy or use a nuclear weapon.
So there is a lot of talk about biology this morning. It is
very important, but it would be a huge mistake for us not to
explicitly deal with the overwhelming consequences of a nuclear
event.
Chairman Lieberman. And here, you are not talking about a
nuclear weapon delivered by a ballistic missile, or are you?
Dr. Madia. I am not, and I am not talking about a radiation
weapon, either, which has certain consequences. I am talking
about a low-yield, a poorly-developed nuclear device. Take the
technology deployed from the Manhattan Project, very pedestrian
technology. If someone has the right kind of material, and that
is the central issue here, but access to that material
unfortunately is in question, especially in the former Soviet
Union, those kind of threats, to me, are the kind of enormous
consequence threats that the American public expects this
government to deal with.
Chairman Lieberman. Right. And here, we are talking about
something being brought in in a suitcase or on a truck or----
Dr. Madia. A poorly-constructed low-yield device is
deployable in at least a truck.
Chairman Lieberman. Are the labs doing work on----
Dr. Madia. Absolutely. My point was, there was a lot of
biology talk this morning.
Chairman Lieberman. No, understood. Good point.
Dr. Madia. It is still very important, but----
Chairman Lieberman. Dr. Branscomb.
Dr. Branscomb. I agree with his assessment that that is the
critical risk. The level of the risk is 100 percent, if you
believe that the terrorists can come by the appropriate,
relatively modest amount of highly enriched uranium. We know
that if they can, they can get it in the country. There is no
way now we could stop it. And if they get it in the country,
they can rent a loft in downtown Manhattan and in a relatively
short time assemble a nuclear weapon out of that material. It
is well known how to do that. It will not be very efficient,
but it will kill tens of thousands of people, if not more.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Dr. Branscomb. What can the government do about that? There
is almost nothing R&D will do about that, but there is
something to do. It is terribly important. We have an
arrangement right now with the Russians in which they are
cooperating with us on our helping finance the cost of taking
their hundreds of tons of highly enriched uranium sitting there
in storage. It is well protected where it is now, but they have
agreed to reprocess some of that material down to where there
is only 20 percent enrichment level. It cannot be made into a
weapon at that level, and that is fairly cheap to do. Later on,
you can improve its concentration sufficient for use in a power
plant, but still will not be able to make a nuclear weapon.
That is a case where the Russians are willing to work now.
If the government does not put up the money and complete the
program while they are playing the game, we will regret it for
the rest of our lives.
Chairman Lieberman. There is a lot of support here for what
started out as the Nunn-Lugar program of cooperative threat
reduction. There was some uneasiness about this
administration's initial response to it. It looked like it was
going to cut back support. But I think we are turning that
around, and that is critically important.
I presume one of the other things science and technology
might do is to increase our capacity to detect when uranium
might be brought in by a container----
Dr. Branscomb. We should certainly work at that, but it is
very difficult to do because the materials are not very
radioactive and they are easy to shield.
Chairman Lieberman. We have had testimony here that one
percent of the containers coming into the country are opened or
checked in any way, mostly through paperwork, and not even
opened.
Dr. Madia. Detecting those kinds of materials is far easier
than detecting the precursors to chemical or biological
weapons.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Dr. Madia. It is not easy, but it is far easier there than
it is on chemical and biological.
Chairman Lieberman. Dr. Read, talk to us a little about the
state of activity in the private sector today. I know you are
focused particularly on biotechnology responses. A new industry
may emerge from this crisis which might be called the
biodefense industry.
But it is my impression both in this area, biodefense, but
also in a whole host of other areas, that proposals are coming
through the door to us about biometric devices to check people
coming in through airports, for instance, etc. Part of this is
the good old healthy American spirit of entrepreneurship, that
this is a need, this is a new market, and so people want to be
part of it, part of it because of profit motive, part of it
patriotism. Am I seeing this correctly, and what kinds of
activities are you seeing in your field that already hold some
hope to protect the security of the American people here at
home?
Dr. Read. Well, clearly in the last 9 months, Senator,
there has been a lot of new excitement about how people could
apply technology they have already been working on to some of
these problems, and we have already discussed the confusion
that follows from trying to find a customer for that.
DARPA, by the way, is a marvelous model for funding high-
risk early-stage work. I have had some fair interaction with
them and various individuals there. It is a good team. They
have a great culture to do this, and they have something else
that I hope if you create SARPA that you will endow it with,
which is a freedom to operate away from the unbelievably
burdensome procurement rules that are part of most defense
procurement. And so they have this other category. I do not
know all the names here, but you know what I am speaking about.
This is terribly important for small companies that cannot
invest in all the infrastructure to comply with the FARs and
the various rules. So that would be worthwhile.
It should also be noted that the folks at DARPA often, at
least in private, will express some concern that their
customer, the DOD, when they throw a successful DARPA-sponsored
research project over the wall that they do not even hear the
splash on the other side. We should be careful not to focus on
the process of getting a bunch of research started in these
areas without very careful thought about who the customer is,
the kind of deployment issues that were just discussed about
the radiation sensors, for example, and also about how much of
this ought to be done in the government and how much ought to
be done in the private sector.
The ground has been laid in the case of countermeasures
against specific biological agents based on huge and successful
investments in the basic science, underlying virology and
microbiology, largely at and through the NIH. We have fabulous
groundwork. It is our unique asset in terms of being able to
deal with this. We really are prepared to then start
translating that into specific vaccines for the highest risk
threats, highest in terms of their availability, the agents'
availability to the bad guys, highest in terms of their
deployability, and highest in terms of their potential to cause
panic and economic disruption because they are transmissible,
for example, as opposed to a non-transmissible agent.
So I am quite optimistic, and I have seen research programs
targeting many of these animal pathogens or pathogens of people
who live in the poorest parts of the world where we have the
beginnings of programs that could be accelerated. Much of what
is going to need to happen and most of the dollars to actually
have something in a vial that could be drawn up in a syringe or
given by a nasal spray or one of these other approaches is in
the application research, the applied research, development
research, the creation of manufacturing facilities, and so on,
and that has historically been successful in the private sector
and not as a function of the direct government facility or
under government direct internal control, and so we need to
organize for that. That is an important part that is missing
right now, is the market signals that would justify the flow of
private capital to finish the job.
I am also very encouraged about high-risk, far-out ideas,
which Dr. Hamburg might want to comment on the plausibility of.
In the middle of an epidemic--perhaps you remember the movie
``Outbreak,'' where Dustin Hoffman manages to get some serum
from this fictional primate that is spreading the outbreak and
something magical happens in test tubes and columns and stuff
and they get a serum that he gives to his girlfriend in the
movie and she survives.
Well, Don Francis, who is one of our great AIDS researchers
and discoverers, advised on that movie and he took me through
it. Every part of that is unproven, but it is not completely
implausible that we could develop tools that would allow a
rapid response. We should not set expectations too high. These
are long-term ideas. But, I see unbelievable stuff every day in
business plans from very plausible, credible scientists related
to biology and high technology. We do need to invest in some of
that. We need to make it clear that there will be a market if
we are successful.
Chairman Lieberman. And this Department can send out some
signals and give some incentives that would do that.
Just to go back, what you are foreseeing is an age in which
we are all going to be looking to take a vaccine that will
protect us preventively. We are not just talking about
treatment once, God forbid, a chemical or biological attack
occurs, but to prevent it proactively.
Dr. Read. These are complex threats that are going to roll
out with more and more sophistication over many years as our
opponents gain more technology, sophistication, and as state-
sponsored resources come to bear. We need things that can be
held in reserve for the worst possible case.
These may be products we would never dream of giving people
under times of low threat. They may be vaccines or drugs with
very high side effects, very serious mortality rates that we
would never tolerate, but we want them in the stockpile. In
fact, we may even want them forward deployed so on a hair
trigger we could get protected.
We may need to have things that are right out there
available, and there may be threat levels, for example, in
which we rethink the recent decision, which I would agree with,
that we not vaccinate with the smallpox vaccine. But we can
imagine a threat level, and maybe even future generations of
smallpox vaccines that are so safe that the right thing to do
is go ahead and immunize the population.
Chairman Lieberman. Sure.
Dr. Read. So it cannot be scattered throughout DOD and HHS
and all these other departments. This new Department has to be
the focus for getting the interplay between the characteristics
of a particular countermeasure, its risks and benefits and
pragmatic deployability, whether it needs freezers to be stored
and so on, balanced with the----
Chairman Lieberman. I find this exciting and also
reassuring. I think part of our responsibility as leaders now
is to be reassuring and part of our capacity to do that is to
bring our enormous science and technology prowess to bear on
these problems.
I do not know if anybody else wants to give us a response.
We always like to end optimistically.
Dr. Branscomb. I would just like to pick up on this last
point, because I believe that one of the keys to the success of
this enterprise is to adopt a technology strategy that does, in
fact, look for the concurrent development of technologies that
do address the homeland security threat and at the same time
either enable you to do that much cheaper than anybody thought
you could, or equally important, provide civil benefits, just
as, indeed, improving the public health capability will do.
Chairman Lieberman. Sure.
Dr. Branscomb. Our report gives a lot of examples of that.
One of the reasons why I think that is very important is
because there is another role for industry here. Industry owns
and operates almost all the systems that are the vulnerable
systems in the country, with the single exception of the
cities. So they have to worry about being attacked as well as
the fact that they do, in fact, do three-quarters of the
Nation's R&D and clearly are a major asset there. If they are
going to be the targets, why have they not made themselves less
vulnerable? Answer: There is no market for being less
vulnerable than they are. They are at equilibrium with the
business justifications.
And so there has to be a partnership between the government
and those industries that will cause those, in some cases, very
glaring vulnerabilities to be addressed collaboratively.
Obviously, we can regulate them into doing it. We do not want
to do any more of that than we have to. We could bribe them
into doing it. We surely do not want to do that. So what is
left, other than maybe some antitrust provisions that might be
possible that would allow an entire industry sector to get
together with the government present and discuss what they are
all going to do voluntarily.
But the other interesting one is the role of the insurance
industry. I do not know if that has been brought to the
Committee's attention----
Chairman Lieberman. No.
Dr. Branscomb [continuing]. But it is already true. I know
people who are in the profession. They are engineers and
technical experts in vulnerability analysis and risk analysis
who are consulting with insurance companies who are now setting
their rates so that the rate of the insurance depends on the
extent to which the customer has, in fact, dealt with some of
these terrorist vulnerabilities. But getting that technically
correct is a big job, not just from individual consultants.
That is, in fact, the job for the full brainpower of this
Department.
But there is an opportunity here for three-way
collaboration between the technical capacity of the government
that understands the risks and the likelihood of various
technological ways of minimizing them, the insurance industry
that can be the vehicle for translating that into a legitimate
market force, and the industry itself that needs to buy that
insurance.
Chairman Lieberman. Very interesting, and it is optimistic
because I will carry that news right back to Hartford with me.
[Laughter.]
I thank you all. You have been a very informed,
constructive and helpful panel. We would like to keep in touch
with you over the next couple of weeks as we begin to draft our
bill.
I am going to leave the record of this hearing open for 10
days, if any of you would like to submit additional testimony
for the record or if any of my colleagues who could not be here
today want to submit questions to you.
In the meantime, I thank you. I wish you a good weekend.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:06 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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