[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
BIOSCIENCE AND THE
INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
PART I AND II
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON PREVENTION
OF NUCLEAR AND BIOLOGICAL ATTACK
of the
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION and SECOND SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 3, 2005 and May 4, 2006
__________
Serial No. 109-53
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Peter T. King, New York, Chairman
Don Young, Alaska Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Lamar S. Smith, Texas Loretta Sanchez, California
Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts
Christopher Shays, Connecticut Norman D. Dicks, Washington
John Linder, Georgia Jane Harman, California
Mark E. Souder, Indiana Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon
Tom Davis, Virginia Nita M. Lowey, New York
Daniel E. Lungren, California Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Jim Gibbons, Nevada Columbia
Rob Simmons, Connecticut Zoe Lofgren, California
Mike Rogers, Alabama Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas
Stevan Pearce, New Mexico Bill Pascrell, Jr., New Jersey
Katherine Harris, Florida Donna M. Christensen, U.S. Virgin
Bobby Jindal, Louisiana Islands
Dave G. Reichert, Washington Bob Etheridge, North Carolina
Michael McCaul, Texas James R. Langevin, Rhode Island
Charlie Dent, Pennsylvania Kendrick B. Meek, Florida
Ginny Brown-Waite, Florida
______
SUBCOMMITTEE ON PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR AND BIOLOGICAL ATTACK
John Linder, Georgia, Chairman
Don Young, Alaska James R. Langevin, Rhode Island
Christopher Shays, Connecticut EdwarD J. Markey, Massachusetts
Daniel E. Lungren, California Norman D. Dicks, Washington
Jim Gibbons, Nevada Jane Harman, California
Rob Simmons, Connecticut Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Bobby Jindal, Louisiana Columbia
Charlie Dent, Pennsylvania Donna M. Christensen, U.S. Virgin
Peter T. King, New York (Ex Islands
Officio) Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
(Ex Officio)
(II)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
STATEMENTS
The Honorable John Linder, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Georgia and Chairman, Subcommittee on Prevention of
Nuclear and Biological Attack:
Oral Statement................................................. 1
Prepared Statement............................................. 2
The Honorable James R. Langevin, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Rhode Island, and Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack.... 3
The Honorable Norman D. Dicks, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Washington........................................ 25
The Honorable Christopher Shays, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Connecticut.................................. 30
The Honorable Rob Simmons, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Connecticut........................................... 21
Witnesses
Thursday, November 3, 2005
Mr. David A. Relman, M.D., Associate Professor, Microbiology &
Immunology, and of Medicine, Stanford University:
Oral Statement................................................. 4
Prepared Statement............................................. 6
Mr. David R. Franz, D.V.M., Ph.D., Vice President & Chief
Biological Scientist, Midwest Research Institute:
Oral Statement................................................. 9
Prepapred Statement............................................ 10
Mr. Michael J. Hopmeier, Chief, Innovative and Unconventional
Concepts, Unconventional Concepts, Inc.:
Oral Statement................................................. 14
Prepared Statement............................................. 16
Thursday, May 4, 2006
Mr. Charles Allen, Chief Intelligence Officer, Department of
Homeland Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 48
Prepared Statement............................................. 50
Ambassador Kenneth Brill, Director, National Counterproliferation
Center, Office of the Director of National Intelligence:
Oral Statement................................................. 41
Prepared Statement............................................. 45
Dr. Alan MacDougall, Chief, Counterproliferation Support Office,
Defense Intelligence Agency:
Oral Statement................................................. 57
Prepared Statement............................................. 58
Mr. Bruce Pease, Director, Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation
and Arms Control, Central Intelligence Agency:
Oral Statement................................................. 54
Prepared Statement............................................. 55
BIOSCIENCE AND THE
INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
PART I
----------
Thursday, November 3, 2005
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear
and Biological Attacks,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m., in
Room 334, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. John Linder
[chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Linder, Shays, Simmons, Langevin,
and Dicks.
Mr. Linder. [Presiding.] The Homeland Security Subcommittee
on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack will come to
order.
I want to thank our witnesses for being here today.
In 2001, America was awakened to the reality of
bioterrorism when five individuals died across the country as a
result of a still-unsolved terrorist attack involving anthrax.
In addition to those tragic deaths, 17 others developed anthrax
infections. Thousands were placed on a regimen of cipro and a
number of businesses, as well as House and Senate office
buildings, were closed for months for decontamination.
Our experience in 2001 was a wake-up call. Prior to 2001,
the United States saw the threat of biological weapons was
largely in strategic or military terms. At that time, no one
seriously believed that this country would fall victim to a
biological event due to the fear of nuclear retaliation. Our
thinking, as we have since discovered, was 100 percent wrong.
One area that must be improved is our intelligence. In
March of 2005, the report from the Silberman-Robb Commission on
the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding
Weapons of Mass Destruction recommended that the United States
improve its biological weapons intelligence. The principal
theme of the report was the need to increase interaction
between the intelligence community and the national security
professionals.
As chairman of the subcommittee, I can tell you that
overseeing our efforts to prevent a nuclear event are
relatively easy compared to the biological side, because
scientists, federal agencies and the intelligence community and
relevant international players all regularly talk with each
other about nuclear security. We need a similar system for
biological pathogens and technology, and we need it soon.
It is incumbent upon us to face a reality that dangerous
organisms like anthrax and botulism toxin, which occur
naturally in the environment, can easily be acquired or even
grown by terrorists bent on using them against the American
people. We need a robust communication link between the
intelligence and bioscience communities, education for
researchers on the dangers on the misuse of biotechnology, and
more stringent guidelines for handling or shipping biological
pathogens if we are to significantly diminish this threat.
I understand and appreciate the use of biological pathogens
for scientific purposes, but we fail in our responsibility to
nearly 300 million Americans if we do not ensure that those
same dangerous organisms never fall into the hands of those who
would release them on an unsuspecting and ill-prepared public.
The focus of today's hearing should be on answering the
question of how can the intelligence and bio communities best
communicate toward that end.
Prepared Statement of Hon. John Linder
Thursday, November 3, 2005
I would like to thank our witnesses for appearing before this
Subcommittee today.
In 2001, America was awakened to the reality of bioterrorism when
five individuals died across the country as a result of a still-
unsolved terrorist attack involving anthrax. In addition to those
tragic deaths, seventeen others developed anthrax infections, thousands
were placed on a regiment of Cipro, and a number of businesses, as well
as the House and Senate Office Buildings, were closed for months for
decontamination.
Our experience in 2001 was a wake up call. Prior to 2001, the
United States saw the threat of biological weapons in largely strategic
or military terms. At that time, no one seriously believed that this
country would fall victim to a biological event due to the fear of
nuclear retaliation. Our thinking, as we have since discovered, was 100
percent wrong.
One area that must be improved is our intelligence. In March 2005,
a report from the Silberman/Robb Commission on the Intelligence
Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction
recommended that the U.S. improve its biological weapons intelligence
capability. The principal theme of the report was the need to increase
interaction between the intelligence community and national security
professionals.
As Chairman of this Subcommittee, I can tell you that overseeing
our efforts to prevent a nuclear event are relatively easy compared to
the biological side. Nuclear scientists, Federal agencies, the
intelligence community, and relevant international players all
regularly talk with each other about nuclear security. We need a
similar system for biological pathogens and technology, and we need it
now.
It is incumbent upon us to face a reality that dangerous organisms
like anthrax and botulinum toxin, which occur naturally in the
environment, can be easily acquired or even grown by terrorists bent on
using them against the American people.
We need a robust communication link between the intelligence and
bioscience communities, education for researchers on the dangers of
misuse of biotechnology, and more stringent guidelines for handling or
shipping biological pathogens, if we are to significantly diminish the
threat.
I certainly understand, and appreciate, the use of biological
pathogens for scientific purposes, but we fail in our responsibility to
nearly 300 million Americans if we do not ensure that those same
dangerous organisms never fall into the hands of those who would
release them on an unsuspecting and ill-prepared public. The focus of
today's hearing should be on answering the question of how can the
intelligence and bio communities best communicate toward that end, and
I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses on that topic.
I now recognize my friend from Rhode Island, Mr. Langevin, for the
purposes of making an opening statement.
Mr. Linder. I look forward to the testimony of our
witnesses on that topic, and I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman
from Rhode Island, Mr. Langevin.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to welcome and thank our witnesses for
appearing before us today.
Today, we are going to discuss a topic that many us of
might not have thought much about before, the idea of medical
and biological intelligence. Now, we are fortunate to have
three experts in this not-so-well-known field here today to
help educate us.
I know from my service on the House Armed Services
Committee the importance of the military place in medical
intelligence. I know how crucial it is for the battlefield
commander to have a clear picture of all the hazards that his
troops may face.
Often this includes not only the capabilities of the
enemy's weapons, but also the local epidemiology; the diseases
in the local water supply that his soldiers should be aware of;
or communicable diseases that he must protect them against.
Does the enemy possess chemical or biological weapons
capabilities? If so, what is the most effective countermeasure?
These are the kinds of questions that medico-and bio-
science intelligence professionals in the military must answer.
I think there are lessons that can be learned from the
military's approach to help us protect not just our service men
and women, but our civilian population as well.
Of course, there are also differences. If a military
commander is told that his soldiers will be operating in an
area where anthrax is endemic among animals such as
Afghanistan, he can simply order his troops to be vaccinated.
This does not always translate to the civilian population,
however.
We know, for example, that 2 years ago the president
pledged to vaccinate both the military and first-responder
community against smallpox. The plan was to vaccinate 500,000
members of each community. While the program succeeded among
the military, it failed miserably in the first-responder
community, with only 40,000 vaccinated, less than 10 percent of
the target goal.
So while I do believe there are many useful lessons that we
can adapt from the military's experience, I know that we cannot
apply all of the systems and procedures directly to the
civilian side. I hope our witnesses will elaborate on where we
should and should not be seeking to draw comparisons, and also
I am interested to learn more about the similarities and
differences between bio-weapons and naturally occurring
diseases.
For example, will systems used to detect and defend against
bio-weapons also be effective for naturally occurring diseases?
From what I have seen, and I hope that the witnesses will
correct me if I am wrong, the potential seriousness, for
example, of an avian flu pandemic is much greater than any
scenarios that have been seen for a possible bio-weapons
attack.
So while this committee and the Department of Homeland
Security are more focused on intentional attacks, rather than
natural catastrophes, we hope that we can leverage our
practices so that they will be helpful for either eventuality.
We have seen from the recent Gulf Coast hurricanes that the
Department of Homeland Security, if it focuses purely on
terrorism, will fail the American people. I look forward to an
open and informative discussion today. Once again, I thank the
witnesses for being here and I look forward to your testimony.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Linder. I thank the gentleman.
Our witnesses today are Dr. David Relman, associate
professor of microbiology and immunology and of medicine at
Stanford University; Dr. David Franz, vice president and chief
biological scientist at Midwest Research Institute; and Mr.
Michael Hopmeier, the president of Unconventional Concepts,
Inc.
We welcome you all.
Dr. Relman? We would ask you to try and keep your statement
to about 5 minutes. The entire statement, without objection,
will be made part of the record.
STATEMENT OF DAVID RELMAN
Dr. Relman. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Linder and
members of the committee. It is an honor to be able to present
my thoughts to you on a topic of substantial importance to the
security of the United States.
I am trained both as a physician specializing in infectious
diseases and as a microbiologist, and currently run a research
laboratory in the academic sector. I have served as a professor
of medicine and of microbiology at Stanford since 1994.
In 1997, I joined a newly formed advisory group for the
Defense Intelligence Agency known as BioChem 2020. This group
of academic, industry and government experts, which also
includes Dr. Franz to my left, identifies and assesses current
and future threats related to the potential misuse of the life
sciences and advises the intelligence community on these
matters.
Among other relevant activities, I am currently a member of
the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity.
Today, we are blessed with a set of unprecedented
opportunities in the life sciences, and with them a set of
serious and formidable challenges. The pace of advance in the
life sciences continues to accelerate at a rapid rate. These
advances have become globally disseminated and widely
accessible. While these advances enable broad and powerful new
tools for improving health and treating disease, they also
carry with them unavoidable inherent risks of misuse and
possible harm.
One of the most important approaches for addressing these
potential threats is to anticipate and interdict them before
they cause harm. To do this, one needs a robust, experienced,
agile and creative intelligence collection and analysis
capability. So how does this need stack up against current
capabilities?
Unfortunately, current intelligence community expertise in
the life sciences is not sufficient to meet these challenges.
Historically, most investments in science and technology
expertise within the intel community have been in the physical
sciences. Relatively few biologists have been recruited to work
within this community.
Those that have been recruited are thinly and unevenly
distributed across vast agencies. There are assigned huge
portfolios. They are frequently reassigned to entirely new
areas of work or moved to new administrative positions, and
they quickly become sequestered from the daily buzz of activity
in the life sciences. Separation from today's life sciences
workplace inevitably leads to ineffectiveness and irrelevance.
In short, at the present time, bioscience expertise within the
intelligence community is patchy and thin, inadequately
coordinated, and rapidly outdated.
So let me offer some thoughts about two basic solutions, an
internal approach and an external approach. First, in building
a more robust, sustained and effective capability in the life
sciences within the intelligence community, it is critical that
state-of-the-art scientific expertise guide both intelligence
collection and analysis. Additional researchers with doctoral
degrees in the life sciences and working experience at the
cutting edge of science need to be recruited in substantial
numbers to the intelligence community. Significant efforts will
also be needed to retain these individuals and maintain their
intimate familiarity and connectedness with the state-of-the-
art in their respective disciplines.
Second, efforts to create a robust external advisory entity
to the intelligence community on current and future biological
threats should be expanded, strengthened and accelerated. On
this point, I support Recommendation 13.1 of the Commission on
the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding
Weapons of Mass Destruction, aka the Silberman-Robb Commission,
which suggests the creation of a Biological Sciences Advisory
Group.
DIA's BioChem 2020 illustrates some of the features that
would be desirable. This advisory group should provide guidance
on anticipating future technological and conceptual
developments in the life sciences; provide guidance on
intelligence targeting and collection requirements; provide
expert analysis of relevant intelligence; and provide an
independent reality check on technical assessments in the life
sciences.
The group should operate under the auspices of the national
security and intelligence community leadership and provide
input at the highest levels of these communities. The group
should operate independently and initiate its own analyses, as
well as respond to requests. The group should also be composed
of leading experts from academia, industry and government from
a wide range of disciplines.
A core set of dedicated members should meet frequently
enough to establish close working relationships with the
intelligence community. This has been a particularly important
and successful feature of DIA's BioChem 2020. It is my sense
that many leading figures in the life sciences and technology
communities would be more than willing to participate in this
effort to establish a productive and effective working
relationship with members of the intelligence community.
In conclusion, we face daunting challenges from rapidly
accelerating advances in the life sciences and the inherent
dual-use risks that they pose. Anticipating, recognizing and
interdicting emerging biological threats will not be easy, but
we cannot afford not to try. I believe that the time is now
opportune for action.
I am happy to answer any questions. Thank you.
[The statement of Dr. Relman follows:]
Prepared Statement of David A. Relman
Thursday, November 3, 2005
Good morning Chairman Linder, Ranking Member Langevin, and Members
of the Committee. It is an honor to have this opportunity to present my
thoughts to you on a topic of substantial importance to the security of
the United States. To begin, let me provide you with a few brief
comments on my background and the expertise that I bring to the issues
at hand today.
I am trained both as a physician and practitioner of infectious
diseases, as well as a research microbiologist, and currently run a
laboratory of basic investigation into the mechanisms of microbial
disease and the discovery of novel microbial agents of disease. I have
served as a professor of medicine and of microbiology at Stanford
University since 1994. Through relationships forged in the mid-1990's
as a research funding recipient and reviewer for the Defense Advance
Research Projects Agency, I was asked in 1997 to join a newly-formed
advisory group at the Defense Intelligence Agency, known as Biochem 20/
20. This group of academic, industry, and government experts (which
also includes Dr. Franz) identifies and assesses current and future
threats related to the potential misuse of the life sciences and
associated technologies, and advises the intelligence community. I have
participated in a variety of studies at the National Academies of
Science on future biological threats, served on biodefense advisory
groups for the Departments of Defense and Energy, and am currently a
member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity.
Challenges
Today, we are blessed with a set of unprecedented opportunities in
the life sciences and with them, a set of serious and formidable
challenges. The pace of advance in the life sciences and related
technologies continues to accelerate at a dizzying rate. New insights
and discoveries are arising in unpredictable fashion from the
convergence of previously unrelated scientific disciplines. These
advances in the life sciences have become globally disseminated, and
made widely accessible due to the inherent openness of the life
sciences enterprise. For example, biological engineering of microbes
can now be executed in the home. While these advances enable broad and
powerful new tools for improving health and treating disease, they also
carry with them unavoidable, inherent risks of misuse and possible
harm.
One of the most important approaches for addressing these potential
threats is to anticipate and interdict them before they cause harm.
(This concept is relevant to biological threats of both natural and
man-made origin.) Prevention is far more cost-effective than response
and recovery. To be able to anticipate future biological threats one
needs a robust, experienced, agile and creative intelligence collection
and analysis capability. How does this need stack up against current
capabilities?
Reality Check
Unfortunately, current intelligence community capabilities and
expertise in the life sciences and related technologies are not
sufficient to meet these challenges. Historically, most investments in
expertise within the intelligence community in the realm of science and
technology have emphasized the physical sciences. (When referring to
the ``intelligence community'', I mean to include the national security
communities at large.) Relatively few biologists have been recruited to
work within this community. Those that have been recruited are thinly
and unevenly distributed across vast agencies, assigned huge
portfolios, and quickly become sequestered and cut off from the daily
buzz of communication, sharing and discussion that is the essential
fuel of the life sciences. Separation from today's workplace in the
life sciences inevitably leads to ineffectiveness and an inability to
appreciate the cutting edge or to predict future trends. This problem
is compounded when analysts and collectors are re-assigned to entirely
new areas of work or moved to new administrative positions on a
frequent basis. In short, at the present time, bioscience expertise
within the intelligence community is too patchy and thin, inadequately
coordinated, unsustained, and becomes rapidly outdated.
In theory, an inadequate set of resources within the intelligence
community might be partially offset by efforts to borrow or share
resources (e.g., expertise) from outside the community. For example,
groups of outside experts might provide a continuing, direct link to
some of the most relevant, advancing frontiers in the life sciences, as
well as assessments of future threats and current intelligence.
Although efforts of this type have taken place, and are worth
discussing in some detail as part of this hearing, the net result has
failed so far to meet the community's needs. However, I believe that
more can be done with this approach, as well as with complementary
approaches to build the internal expertise of the intelligence
community. In particular, I am relatively optimistic that the
traditional cultural barriers between this community and today's life
sciences communities can be overcome.
Possible solutions
Let me offer some thoughts about two basic solutions: an internal
approach and an external approach.
First, in building a more robust, sustained and effective internal
capability in the life sciences within the intelligence community, it
is critical that state-of-the-art scientific expertise guide both,
intelligence collection and intelligence analysis.
--Researchers with doctoral degrees in the life sciences and
working experience at the cutting edge in their respective fields need
to be recruited in substantial numbers to the intelligence community.
--Significant efforts will also be needed to retain these
individuals and maintain their intimate familiarity and connectedness
with the cutting edge in their respective disciplines. Regular
assignments to the scientific workplace may be necessary. Continuing
advanced scientific education is essential. The intelligence community
should avoid assigning these scientists to unrelated jobs and
responsibilities.
Second, efforts to create an external advisory entity to the
intelligence community on matters related to threats from the life
sciences and related technologies should be expanded, strengthened, and
given high priority. On this point, I support Recommendation 13.1 of
The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States
Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (Report, March 31, 2005;
Silberman and Robb, Co-Chairmen) which suggests the creation of an
advisory group, that they have named the ``Biological Sciences Advisory
Group''. DIA's Biochem 20/20 provides some examples of features that
would be desirable.
--This advisory group should provide guidance on anticipating
future technological and conceptual developments in the life sciences,
provide guidance on intelligence targeting and collection requirements,
provide expert analysis of relevant intelligence, and provide an
independent ``reality-check'' on technical assessments in the life
sciences.
--The group should operate under the auspices of the national
security and intelligence community leadership, and provide input at
the highest levels of these communities. The WMD Commission suggestion
that such a group report to the Director of National Intelligence
should be strongly considered.
--The group should operate independently and initiate its own
analyses, as well as respond to requests from the intelligence,
national security, and policy-making communities. It should have access
to any and all intelligence that is relevant to its work. The group
should generate analysis products that are available to the broad
outside scientific community, as well as products at the classified
level.
--The group should be composed of leading experts from academia,
industry, and government, from a wide range of disciplines. A core set
of dedicated members should meet frequently enough to establish close
working relationships between the outside experts and the intelligence
community representatives. This has been a particularly important and
successful feature of DIA's Biochem 20/20.
--Given that both, potential threats and solutions are globally
dispersed, every effort should be made to share the output of this
advisory group with its international counterparts.
It is my sense that many leading figures in the life sciences and
technology communities would be more than willing to participate in a
serious effort to establish a productive and effective working
relationship with members of the intelligence community.
Conclusions
In conclusion, we face daunting challenges from rapidly
accelerating advances in the life sciences and related technologies,
and the inherent dual use risks that they pose with respect to
potential future biological threats. Anticipating, recognizing and
interdicting these threats will not be easy. But we cannot afford not
to try. The critical elements of a meaningful effort in this regard
will include 1) building a more robust and sustained expertise in the
life sciences within the intelligence community, and 2) creating an
external expert advisory group with a close working relationship to
this and related communities. Given the similarity of my
recommendations with those from other policy and review groups, and
what I perceive to be receptive, relevant parties, the time is now
opportune for action.
I am happy to answer any questions.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 35695.001
Mr. Linder. Thank you, Dr. Relman.
Dr. Franz?
STATEMENT OF DAVID FRANZ, VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF BIOLOGICAL
SCIENTIST, MIDWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Mr. Franz. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members, it is an
honor to appear before you to address issues related to the
interface between the intelligence and scientific communities
and the potential benefit to be gained by bringing these
communities more closely together to address biological threats
to the nation.
My background is described in my written statement. I have
attempted to provide my views in a submitted statement for the
record and will summarize them here.
I believe that biological warfare is unique for several
reasons. I highlight the fact that the facilities, equipment,
procedures and human resources needed to develop biological
weapons are dual-use. This means that they can be used to do
good or bad things with biology. Therefore, it is in fact often
impossible to understand the ultimate purpose of ongoing
research simply by inspecting a facility and even having the
opportunity to visit with scientists working there.
As an example, we learned relatively very little about the
enormous biological warfare program in the former Soviet Union
before the epidemiological studies of the Sverdlovsk anthrax
accident and the defection of two key scientists in the early
1990s. At the end of the Cold War, as a result of the
Trilateral Agreement, U.S.-U.K.-Russia, of 1992, we gained some
access to Russian biological facilities, but very little true
understanding of the programs.
More importantly, I watched personally as those
negotiations and visits build walls of silence and suspicion
and shut down communication until the trilateral negotiations
failed and the Nunn-Lugar science-based programs stimulated
dialogue directly between scientists. I believe there are
important lessons to be learned from this experience.
Our more immediate concern today, biological terrorism,
differs from biological warfare in that, one, the footprint of
both the production capability and the weapon can be infinitely
smaller; and two, attribution will typically be a great deal
more difficult. The goals of the terrorist are different.
Depending on the agent selected, I believe that disruptive
deployment of a biological weapon of some kind is possible for
almost anyone with intent. Furthermore, there is a broad range
of potential threats presenting minimal to very significant
technical barriers for the would-be terrorist, but intent is
central to any attempt to abuse biology.
What does this mean for the intelligence community? One,
what we learn about intent will be more valuable than what we
know about capability. Two, even in this new small world, we
will be forced to make high-regret decisions or responses with
less information in the future than in the past. And three, we
must constantly thrive, as Dr. Relman said, to bring deep
biological science understanding to the IC.
What can we do? First, we must hire and retain the best
people we can. The cultures of science and intelligence are in
many ways antithetical. Science is about communication,
collaboration, openness and flexible work schedules and getting
lifetime credit for the work that one does. Intelligence, on
the other hand, is about sensitive or classified information;
about working with another's data and publications and not
sharing and not giving credit for one's analysis and thought,
at least not widely. When we do succeed in hiring first-rate
scientists into the IC, they too often become disenchanted with
the culture in which they must work.
And two, we must attempt to benefit from the experience and
perspective of the private sector. Biotechnologies, as Dr.
Relman said, are both changing rapidly and spreading, with
broad and diverse applications across disciplines around the
globe. Science and business travelers today together cast a
much wider net than can ever be formally assembled by our
government.
Finally, I believe that a reasonable analogy to the problem
we face in preparing the IC workforce to deal with science as
squishy as biology is foreign language qualification for
regional studies. The better my French, the richer will be my
experience on a holiday in France and the more the French
people will enjoy interacting with me.
Science is a common language. The better my understanding
of the technologies and the vocabulary and the idiom, the
richer will be my experience talking science anywhere in the
world, and the more my colleagues will enjoy our time together.
When scientists talk about scientists, transparency is enhanced
and intent often becomes better understood. As I have said, I
believe that intent is the key to discovering those who would
mis-use biology today.
I thank you for this opportunity.
[The statement of Mr. Franz follows:]
Prepared Statement of David Franz
Thursday, November 3, 2005
Mr. Chairman, distinguished Members, it is an honor to appear
before you to address issues related to the interface between the
intelligence and scientific communities and the potential benefit to be
gained by bringing these communities more closely together to address
biological threats to the nation. I am currently Vice President and
Chief Biological Scientist at the Midwest Research Institute in Kansas
City, Director of the National Agriculture Biosecurity Center at Kansas
State University and Senior Fellow for Bioterrorism at the Combating
Terrorism Center at West Point. I served on active duty in the U.S.
Army from 1971 to 1998, 24 of those years in the U.S. Army Medical
Research and Materiel Command. I served for 11 years at the U.S. Army
Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease, which I commanded
before my retirement. During my tour of duty at USAMRIID, I served as
Chief Inspector on three UNSCOM biological warfare missions to Iraq and
as technical expert on the Trilateral (US-UK-Russia) Agreement visits
and negotiations to Russia. I have worked under the auspices of the
``Nunn-Lugar'' Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program in the Former
Soviet Union (FSU) since 1994 and, since 1998, chaired the National
Academies of Science standing committee which provides technical review
to the CTR-supported research conducted there. I currently serve on
senior S&T advisory biodefense panels for the Defense Threat Reduction
Agency and for the Department of Homeland Security, Science and
Technology Directorate and I chair the Working Group on International
Collaboration of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity
(NSABB) within the Department of Health and Human Services. The myriad
opportunities given me throughout my career in military medical
research have led me to better understand and value the use of science
as a common language to build relationships, understanding and
transparency internationally.
This committee has asked that I provide thoughts on how the
scientific community can be more effectively engaged by the
intelligence community and some broad perspective on how to address the
problem of intelligence regarding the biological threat(s). I have
attempted to provide my views on a number of these issues below.
BACKGROUND:
Why is biology special? I believe that biological warfare is unique
for several reasons. First, the facilities, equipment, procedures and
human resources needed are ``dual-use''. This means that they can be
used to do good or bad things with biology. When attempting to
understand what is going on within a state scientific program or the
laboratory of a non-state organization, understanding the intent of
those who control these dual-use resources is more important than our
access to the facilities. It is, in fact, often impossible to
understand the ultimate purpose of ongoing research simply by
`inspecting' a facility and even having the opportunity for typically-
orchestrated, monitored and, therefore, stilted discussion with the
scientists. Additionally, biology is special because, in contrast to a
chemical attack, for example, we cannot yet provide real-time warning
to effectively use personal protective gear. Thirdly, clinical disease
resulting from biological exposure occurs hours or days after attack.
Unlike most other weapons systems, the relatively long latent period
between attack and illness provides opportunity for perpetrators to
escape and greatly complicates both the medical care of victims and law
enforcement activities.
Lessons from the cold war: We learned relatively very little about
the enormous biological warfare program of the FSU before the
epidemiological studies of the 1979 Sverdlosk anthrax accident and the
defection of two key scientists to the west which occurred in the early
90s. Our intelligence failure may have been the result of a combination
of the uniqueness of biology and a relatively lower concern for the
biological threat than for the nuclear or chemical threats during those
years. Coincidentally, there was much more interaction between nuclear
scientists from the USSR and the US during this period than there was
between biological scientists from the two countries. . .and we
understood their nuclear program better during that period. At the end
of the cold war, as a result of the Trilateral agreement of 1992, we
gained some access to Russian biological facilities but very little
true understanding of the programs. Confidently inferring intent from a
formal facilities visit or inspection was the exception. More
importantly, I watched as those negotiations built walls of silence and
suspicion and shut down communication. . .until the Trilateral
negotiations failed and Nunn-Lugar science-based programs opened
dialogue directly between scientists. The CTR programs haven't made us
totally safe, but they helped both sides understand better what we did
and didn't know. In my experience, more good has come from the
resulting personal relationships build around the science than from
formal government programs calculated to control proliferation. There
are important lessons to be learned from this experience.
Biological Warfare vs. Biological Terrorism: Dealing with the
massive offensive biological programs of the FSU, frustrating as the
process was during the ``Trilateral Era'', will likely prove to have
been easier than what we will face in the future. Biological terrorism
differs from biological warfare in that 1) the footprint of both a
production capability and the biological weapon itself can be
infinitely smaller and 2) attribution will typically be a great deal
more difficult. Finally, we need only look to the ``anthrax letters of
`01'' to see how disruptive and costly a very small attack can be.
How to think about the threat: Today's threat probably differs
significantly from that during the height of the USSR's massive
offensive program. Because of strategic changes in centers of power and
world politics, terrorists are believed to be a more likely threat than
state-run programs. Whether state-sponsored or not, the magnitude of an
aerosol attack launched by a terrorist group will likely be smaller and
more primitive than what we would have expected from the USSR. We
normally consider access to the agents, technical expertise, the need
for facilities and equipment and the intention to use biology as a
weapon as the key barriers to success for the would-be terrorist.
Depending on the agent selected, I believe that disruptive deployment
of a biological attack of some kind is possible for almost anyone with
intent. To illustrate this point--the spectrum from ``easy'' to
``hard''--I often use the following simplified model. Success on the
``easy'' end of the spectrum requires just a little more than intent.
Easy<-------------------------------------------------------------------
>Difficult
Few Technical Barriers Many
Technical
Barriers
Contagious Traditional
Highly Contagious (Animal) (Human) Agent Genetically
engineered
(Foot & Mouth Virus) (SARS, Flu, (Anthrax, (????????)
Smallpox) tularemia)
Simply Introduced Introduced Delivered as Introduced
or Aerosol an Aerosol or Aerosol
Available (Available) Available in Modified or
Nature de novo
Spread Naturally Spread Understandin Significant
Naturally g Expertise
Safe to handle Safety Basic Complex
Hazard Equipment Equipment
............ Safety Unknown
Hazard Safety
Hazard
Therefore, there is a broad range of potential threats presenting
minimal to very significant technical barriers for the would-be
terrorist. . .but intent is central to any attempt to abuse biology.
CONCLUSIONS:
What does all this mean for the intelligence community?
1-Although we definitely cannot ignore Soviet or Iraqi--like
programs in the future, we must be able to discover a terrorist-size
program now, if possible at the point of early intent.
2-The biological intelligence target of today will likely be harder
to identify, let alone penetrate, than it was during the cold war.
3-What we learn about `intent' will be more valuable than what we
know about capability.
4-Even in this new, small world, we will be forced to make high-
regret decisions or responses with less information in the future than
in the past.
5-A ``we only collect secrets'' culture, sometimes fostered within
the IC, will leave too much white space between the dots to build the
real story regarding biology, unless we have a broad framework of
scientific understanding on which to pin the relatively few science
``secrets'' which we do discover.
6-We must constantly strive to bring deep biological science
understanding to the community. Analysts need to learn of the latest
discoveries in biology, understand the newest technologies and
appreciate their implications for intentional abuse.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
What can we do? As in any undertaking, the best people with the
best leadership will provide the best outcome to this challenge. We
must put the best people we can into the intelligence community and
give them the best leadership and supporting infrastructure we can
afford.
We must:
1. Hire and retain the best: The cultures of science and
intelligence are, in many ways, antithetical. Science is about
communication, collaboration, openness and flexible work schedules.
Scientists love to publish and they love to tell people about their
work. The currency of science is open, refereed publications and
presentations at national and international meetings. Scientists are
free to publish in journals and, once accepted, their work is forever
credited to them. Scientist care more about discovery and publishing
than about salary, fancy offices or in what part of the country or
world they live. Scientists love to communicate with other scientists.
Intelligence is about sensitive or classified information, about
working with another's data and publications, about not sharing and not
getting credit for ones analysis and thought. . .at least not widely. A
common task of the analyst might be to distill and simplify, often
dated, often openly published literature and then to make giant leaps
of interpretation regarding it's meaning in unknown context. . .and
then to speculate on the intent of a person or group. A ``we only
collect secrets'' mentality_especially in the world of bioterrorism_
might provide us historical intelligence but probably not actionable
intelligence. A culture where knowledge is power, openness is not
advocated and there are few checks and balances can draw second rate
scientists who package speculation as hard evidence. Even the initial
excitement of directly briefing key national decision makers gets old
for real scientists. When we do succeed in hiring first-rate scientists
into the IC (intelligence community), they too often become
disenchanted with their work and the culture. We must find a way to
hire and retain a quality, scientifically literate intelligence
workforce. Traditionally, the community has put analyst expertise
before science expertise; if that policy is to continue, every effort
must be made to give biodefense analysts opportunities to interact with
scientists, engineers and other relevant experts just as often as
possible.
We might:
1-Encourage analysts to obtain joint appointments at universities
or industrial research programs and collaborate with full-time
scientists.
2-Allow analysts to spend as much as 1/3 of their time ``off the
clock'', working in academe, industry or other governmental
laboratories. . .and make publication a part of their performance plan
on which they are rated. In some cases, this might mean 2 days per week
away from the job and in others it might be every third year away.
3-Develop true joint-appointment programs in which an academic or
industrial scientist serves the smaller portion of a FTE within the IC
with a primary career outside.
Fundamentally, it is much more critical today than during the cold
war that the analyst continually interacts with the community of
scientists, outside the IC. A non- or weak-scientist, analyst or
collector briefed by scientists and sent into the scientific culture
will fail to engage and learn. The stronger the scientist, the better
the engagement, the understanding and the trust. . .and the
transparency.
Making the best and the brightest interested scientists available
to our analyst community has value. The DIA Red Team 20/20, on which
both Dr. Relman and I serve, has demonstrated the enormous value of
bringing together the security and the scientific communities. Dr.
Relman and four or five exceptional colleagues from academe provide the
rest of us a wealth of hard science against which we can evaluate our
thoughts and concerns. Even in this setting, although the members of
this committee are all US citizens and have common goals regarding
understanding future threats to our nation, it took several years to
build a sense of `team' in this diverse group. The glue was, and is,
the science.
2. Attempt to benefit from the experience and perspective of the
private sector: Biotechnologies are both changing rapidly and spreading
with broad and diverse application--across disciplines--around the
globe. Electronic communication, ease of rapid travel, new
opportunities for free enterprise and a generally more widespread
openness in formerly closed societies have greatly increased
integration and human interaction among scientists and business persons
worldwide. These travelers, together, cast a much wider net than can
ever be formally assembled by our government. We should seek
opportunities for these traveling masses to provide interaction and
feedback to the community on what's ``out there'' in terms of
technologies and capabilities. Discoveries and observations, regarding
intent, gained from the private sector will obviously occur much more
often by chance than by design, but the numbers and coverage could make
it a very helpful tool, if we can harness it effectively. It is
important that the intelligence community---or possibly the law
enforcement agency to which someone might report an unusual incident---
remain passive receptors of information from the private sector.
Gaining such information from scientists, clinicians and other
knowledgeable individual traveler-citizens is a slippery slope; abuse
will do much more harm than good.
We should:
1-Encourage, not discourage, interactions between U.S. science and
business and their counterparts around the world.
2-Sensitize this community, or parts of it, to the importance of
informing someone, should they observe or hear of what appears to be
malevolent intent. Education of the masses of scientists and
biotechnology business person will have to occur indirectly, raising
general awareness of the importance of controlling the misuse of
biology, rather than tasking them to ``hunt for bioterrorists''.
Activities currently underway by non-governmental organizations, the
National Academies of Science and even the World Health Organization,
to educate and develop awareness regarding the misuse of biotechnology,
(See ``Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism'' 10@ www.nap.edu)
may contribute to developing awareness that could result in gaining
information from unlikely sources.
3-Outside the intelligence community, work together internationally
on common, difficult problems in biology; leads to understanding,
transparency and even trust that cannot be achieved through other means
(See ``Biological Science and Biotechnology in Russia: Controlling
Disease and Enhancing Security'' 10@ www.nap.edu). Chronic and emerging
disease will be with us when the last bioterrorist retires. Working
with colleagues to fight natural disease brings us into contact with
biological activities and builds our network of trusted contacts around
the world. Even in countries which are known to pose a threat to our
biological security, more scientists and clinicians share our goals
regarding health than share the goals of the would-be bioterrorist
regarding the abuse of biology.
4-Understand that the intelligence community is just one of the
tools we have to protect our citizens from those who would harm them.
We must, obviously, conduct classified defense and intelligence
programs to help protect us from threat states or groups and we must
deal from a position of strength in this very dangerous world. However,
we must remember that in the new, smaller world, perception is an
extremely powerful tool and the masses of non-terrorists out there can,
indirectly, help us fight this war on terrorism, if they think
positively of America. Therefore, we must not only allow, but encourage
and support, public health and other programs that both improve human
security but build understanding, some trust and some transparency
between individual Americans and individual citizens of other nations.
Walls around our nation, be they of chain-link or invisible, will not
necessarily make us safer anymore.
The Power of a Common Language: A reasonable analogy to the problem
we face, in preparing an IC workforce to deal with a science as squishy
as biology, is foreign language qualification for regional studies. The
better my French, the richer will be my experience on a holiday in
France and the more the French people will enjoy interacting with me.
Science is a common language; the better my understanding of the
technologies, the vocabulary and the idiom, the richer will be my
experience ``talking science'' anywhere in the world and the more my
colleagues will enjoy our time together. When scientists talk about
science, intent often becomes better understood. . .and intent is the
key to discovering those who would misuse biology.
Mr. Linder. Thank you, Dr. Franz.
Mr. Hopmeier?
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL J. HOPMEIER, CHIEF, INNOVATIVE AND
UNCONVENTIONAL CONCEPTS, UNCONVENTIONAL CONCEPTS, INC.
Mr. Hopmeier. Thank you, Chairman Linder, Ranking Member
Langevin and committee members. I would like to thank you for
this opportunity to discuss today an issue of paramount
importance to our nation, the application and use of
intelligence concepts and techniques to the biosciences,
including medicine and biotechnology.
As we have seen time and again, most recently when several
problems have arisen, such as the anthrax incidents, the Chiron
troubles of last year, and the anticipated difficulties of the
H5N1 avian influenza pandemic now facing us, the need to
anticipate events is tantamount to avoiding surprise and
possibly disaster.
To put my comments in context, I would like to provide you
with a brief summary of my background. I am currently president
of a policy and engineering consulting firm, Unconventional
Concepts, Incorporated. For the last decade, I have been
involved in a number of senior policy positions as a government
employee and a consultant. These have included chairing a
membership on several different science studies.
I am currently special adviser to the United States surgeon
general on homeland security and weapons of mass destruction;
the senior science adviser to the deputy assistant secretary of
defense for chemical and biological defense; and an adviser and
consultant to numerous other agencies and organizations.
Included in my written testimony is a fuller CV.
Today, I will use the term ``intelligence'' in my
discussions, and I think it is appropriate to define it.
``Intelligence'' in this context is the product resulting from
the collection, processing, integration, analysis, evaluation
and interpretation of available information concerning the
biosciences and factors affecting public health and medicine.
I would like to note at this point, however, that even
assuming that we were to fix or improve the intelligence
process associated with the biosciences, we must also be able
and willing to act on what intelligence provides us. While
action based on intelligence is not the topic of today's
testimony, please recognize that intelligence in and of itself
is not a panacea. It is useless without the process, will and
ability to act.
To come right to the point, there exist fundamental
differences between, on the one hand, the medical and
biotechnology communities and the intelligence community on the
other. The differences go far beyond mere changes in goals and
methods, but are in fact cultural and societal. Each of the two
groups have vastly different ways of looking at the world, how
they collect information and make sense of it, how they protect
it and share it, and how they determine what actions to take
based on their analysis and understanding of the information
they collect.
These differences, however, are not mutually exclusive, but
merely the result of different inclinations, training and time
horizons. One key aspect of these differences deals with the
fact that when we discuss intelligence, we are discussing a
prospective technique, i.e. a part of the process that leads to
predicting the future based on information concerning the past
and the present. This is fundamentally different from most of
the medical and public health communities wherein they deal
primarily with the present in a response role. In the field of
biotechnology, however, intelligence is most akin to what we
see in the commercial world wherein we try to predict trends
for guidance in business strategy.
That being said, it is absolutely vital to the safety and
welfare of our nation that at some level these differences be
overcome. As I alluded to earlier, two recent failures we have
had or face now, the Chiron debacle and the avian influenza
panic, are in large part direct results of failures in medical
and biotechnology intelligence. The anthrax incidents
highlighted many deficiencies as well.
I should note that while two of these cases, one dealing
with biotechnology, Chiron, and one dealing with disease/
medicine, influenza, fall in the realm of naturally occurring
events, the lessons and the failings are equally applicable to
terrorism or deliberate acts as we saw with anthrax.
I believe it is vital to recognize that there is no quick
approach to improving the relationship between the intelligence
and biosciences communities. We must change the mode of thought
in the biosciences from observing what is to predicting what
may be, and finally to how can we affect the future. The first
step is intelligence in its broadest form.
With this as a starting point, the question now becomes
what should we do. I believe it is vital to increase both the
overall awareness of intelligence and the mode of thought it
offers among our medical, public health and biosciences
communities. An excellent model is that presented by the
Epidemiologic Intelligence Service.
In the more extensive written testimony I have provided to
the committee, you will find descriptions of a number of
programs and agencies that touch on this important issue, as
well as an outline for a program to leverage the capabilities
of the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center, the CDC, and
academia to create a cadre of trained, motivated and educated
personnel who can raise awareness and knowledge throughout the
bioscience community of intelligence and the role it can play.
We can create trained observers with skills and
capabilities that allow them to view problems, and the world
around them in a new and critical way, one which will lead to
new insights, and ultimately to the ability to prevent medical
disasters and surprise, not merely respond to them.
I would like to leave you with this final thought. The
health and safety of our nation depends on our ability, not
merely to respond to adversity, but to prepare for and
hopefully to mitigate or prevent it. It has often been said
with respect to disease that that which does not kill us makes
us stronger. This, of course, is said by those who were made
stronger, not those killed in the process.
We must become stronger, but we must also minimize the
number of those who will die as a result of our failure in
predicting, and effectively responding to biological attacks
and disasters. The only way to achieve this is through accurate
and effective prediction and prevention of disaster. The means
to achieve this is intelligence, leading to action and the
adoption of biomedical institutions and protocols that
strengthen this new paradigm.
I am happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Hopmeier follows:]
Prepared Statement of Michael Hopmeier
Thursday, November 3, 2005
Chairman Linder, Ranking Member Langevin and committee members, I
would like to thank you for this opportunity to discuss today an issue
of paramount importance to our nation, the application and use of
intelligence concepts and techniques to the biosciences, including
medicine and biotechnology. As we have seen time and time again, and
most recently in several problems that have arisen, such as the anthrax
incidents, the Chiron troubles of last year, and the anticipated
difficulties of the H5N1 Avian influenza pandemic now facing us, the
need to anticipate events is tantamount to avoiding surprise and
possibly disaster.
To put my comments in context, I would like to provide you a brief
summary of my background. I am currently President of a policy and
engineering consulting firm, Unconventional Concepts, Inc. For the last
decade, I have been involved in a number of senior policy positions as
a Special Government Employee and a consultant. These have included
chairing or membership on several Defense Science Board studies. I am
currently the Special Advisor to the US Surgeon General on WMD and
Homeland Security, Senior Science Advisor to the Deputy Assistant to
the Secretary of Defense for Chemical and Biological Defense and an
advisor or consultant to numerous other agencies and organizations.
Included in my written testimony is a fuller CV for further details.
I will use the term ``intelligence'' in my discussions this
morning, and I think it is appropriate to define it. Intelligence, in
the context of my discussion, is the product resulting from the
collection, processing, integration, analysis, evaluation, and
interpretation of available information concerning the biosciences, and
factors affecting public health and medicine.
I would like to note at this point, however, that even assuming
that we were to ``fix'' and improve the intelligence process associated
with the biosciences, we must also be able, and willing, to act on what
intelligence provides us. While action based on intelligence is not the
topic of today's testimony, please recognize that intelligence, in and
of itself, is not a panacea; it is useless without the process, will
and ability to act.
To come right to the point, there exist fundamental differences
between, on the one hand, the medical and biotech communities, and the
intelligence community on the other. The differences go far beyond mere
changes in goals and methods, and are in fact cultural and societal.
Each of the two groups have vastly different ways of looking at the
world, how they collect information and make sense of it, how they
protect it and share it, and how they determine what actions to take
based on their analysis and understanding of the information they
collect. These differences, however, are not mutually exclusive, but
merely the result of different inclinations, training and time
horizons.
One key aspect of these differences deals with the fact that, when
we discuss ``intelligence'' we are discussing a prospective technique,
i.e. a part of the process that leads to predicting the future based on
information concerning the past and the present. This is fundamentally
different from most of the medical and public health communities
wherein they deal primarily with the present in a response role. In the
field of biotechnology, however, intelligence is most akin to what we
see in the commercial world wherein we try to predict trends for
guidance in business strategy.
That being said, it is absolutely vital to the safety and welfare
of our nation that, at some level, these differences be overcome. As I
alluded to earlier, two recent failures we have had or face now, the
Chiron debacle and the Avian Influenza panic, are in large part direct
results of failures in medical and biotechnology intelligence. The
anthrax incidents highlighted many deficiencies as well.
I should note that, while two of these cases, one dealing with
biotechnology (Chiron) and one dealing with disease/medicine
(influenza) fall in the realm of naturally occurring events, the
lessons, and the failings, are equally applicable to terrorism or
deliberate acts as we saw with anthrax.
I believe it is vital to recognize that there is no quick approach
to improving the relationship between the intelligence and the
biosciences communities. We must change the mode of thought in the
biosciences from observing what is to predicting what may be and
finally to how can we affect the future. The first step is intelligence
in its broadest form.
With this as a starting point, the question now becomes ``what
should we do?'' I believe that it is vital to increase both the overall
awareness of intelligence, and the mode of thought it offers among our
medical, public health and biosciences communities. An excellent model
is that presented by the Epidemiologic Intelligence Service. In the
more extensive written testimony I have provided to the Committee, you
will find descriptions of a number of programs and agencies that touch
on this important issue, as well as an outline for a program to
leverage the capabilities of the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence
Center, the CDC and academia to create a cadre of trained, motivated
and educated personnel who can raise awareness and knowledge throughout
the bioscience community of intelligence and the role it can play. We
can create trained observers with skills and capabilities that allow
them to view problems, and the world around them, in a new and critical
way, one which will lead to new insights, and ultimately to the ability
to prevent medical disasters and surprise, not merely respond to them.
I would like to leave you with this final thought. The health and
safety of our nation depends on our ability, not merely to respond to
adversity, but to prepare for, and hopefully mitigate or prevent it. It
has often been said with respect to disease that that which does not
kill us makes us stronger; this, of course, is said by those who were
made stronger, not those killed in the process. We must become
stronger, but we must also minimize the number of those who will die as
a result of our failure in predicting, and effectively responding to
biological attacks and disasters. The only way to achieve this is
through accurate and effective prediction, and prevention, of disaster.
The means to achieve this is intelligence, leading to action, and the
adoption of biomedical institutions and protocols that strengthen this
new paradigm.
I am happy to answer any questions you may have.
Mr. Linder. Thank you all. You give us a lot to think
about.
You each have said that we must have more intelligence to
anticipate and hopefully prevent an activity. We are spending
about $1 out of $8 on homeland security, taking things away
from people on airplanes. We spend $4.2 billion taking things
away from you. We spend less than $700 million a year on
intelligence.
Can the current intelligence community subsume this role?
Dr. Relman?
Dr. Relman. I believe it has the pieces and certainly the
will to do so. I do not think it has the resources to do so. I
think what they desperately need is a more robust fundamental
scientific expertise base, as well as much more productive
relationships with the outside scientific community.
Mr. Linder. Should that community be separate from the
current intelligence agencies, a stand-alone bio intelligence
community?
Dr. Relman. I think they can be in both places
simultaneously, enhanced within and supplemented by accessory
without.
Mr. Linder. The biological community is an academic
community, which instinctively is wide open. The intelligence
community is a closed community. How do we get them to work
together?
Dr. Relman. It is extremely difficult, and a good question.
It alludes to the cultural differences that Michael Hopmeier
described. I think in many ways the two are beginning to see
the needs and realities of the other. For example, I think that
there is now a slow change in the thinking of the academic
community in that we recognize there to be problems that must
be looked at with a different perspective, and an imperative, a
need to do so.
Likewise, I think the intelligence community is beginning
to see that in contrast to every other kind of threat they
faced in past decades, this is one which today is large,
tomorrow will be larger, and is inherently open. And they now
realize that they, too, need to be in fact engaged out in the
open-source world, in biology, but they are not there yet.
Mr. Linder. I had the director of the CIA down at Atlanta
at the CDC last Friday. He would agree with you.
Dr. Franz, how do you determine intent?
Mr. Franz. It is very, very tough. As I said, it is the
core of the problem. My experiences both in Russia with the
trilaterals and in Iraq with UNSCOM demonstrated it is very
difficult to measure intent.
My subsequent experiences working in Russia with the
Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, where scientists and
clinicians worked together on difficult common problems
demonstrated to me that that kind of an approach may be as good
as it is going to get.
We can tear down walls and build this sort of culture of a
little more openness if we are working together on these common
problems. So I really like that approach. From my own
perspective, I have learned more about intent that way than
across a negotiating table.
Mr. Linder. Mr. Hopmeier, are there enough analysts in the
world to do this job?
Mr. Hopmeier. Yes and no. I believe that there are a large
number of analysts available. I believe the significant
deficiency we have is that they are not sufficiently trained or
focused. As I alluded to in my remarks, there is a cultural
difference between the two communities, the intelligence and
the biosciences/biomedical community.
It is my opinion that I think we would find it much more
effective and practical to try and train portions of the
medical and biosciences community in aspects of intelligence,
critical thinking, collection of information and analysis.
And equally, if not more important, provide them an avenue
and a vehicle to make that information available to those who
can make use of it, interpret it, and take action, than it is
to try and either create a whole new arm or capability or
solely create that within the intelligence community, and try
and train them in the biosciences.
One of the specific aspects, as Dr. Relman and Dr. Franz
have both noted, the biosciences community is a community. It
is not a simple matter of blessing someone in the intelligence
community and saying, you are now the czar of biosciences
intelligence. You have to have people who have made contacts,
worked in the community, understand the field, the discussions,
can act one-on-one and be viewed as a peer to be able to be
accepted. Otherwise, they will forever be on the outside of
that.
I believe the answer is somewhere between the two extremes
of converting spies to medical personnel and converting doctors
into spies, but instead being able to train the medical
community in intelligence, but also training the intelligence
community into how to absorb and make use of information that
comes out of the medical and biosciences community.
Mr. Linder. If we did try to educate the spies in medical,
what would you ask them to look for, since almost any agent
they could use is dual-purpose?
Mr. Hopmeier. I think the question really becomes when we
talk about intelligence, how broadly are we defining it? I
believe that we may be mixing two broad, but yet related terms.
In one case, intelligence with the biosciences can be
considered the environment, the pathogens that may spread
through it, the way that they in fact can move through the
community, which includes both natural and manmade diseases and
pathogens.
There is a completely separate, yet related, category of
the technologies, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, ability to
manufacture and distribute vaccines, our ability to put in
place plans. Ultimately, I think that when we look at
intelligence and we create the models and the infrastructure,
it needs to actually be independent of either intentional
release or naturally occurring epidemics. Both of them will
have significant impact, and frankly on our ability to respond.
To plan and predict their spread, develop counter-measures for
them, apply them, and protect our society should be independent
of the cause for the simple reason that in many cases, we may
not know the cause at all.
I will remind you of well over a decade ago Legionnaire's
disease. If we created the stereotypical perfect example of a
terrorist-release of an agent, Legionnaire's disease was it, an
unknown agent occurring in a very narrow period of time,
affecting a very small and targeted population that occurred
very rapidly and with very little ability to trace it. That was
a completely natural event.
I will give you a counter-example, the Rashneeshi cult,
also a long time ago, many years ago. In that case, what we
thought was a completely natural outbreak, we found out a year
or more later was in fact intentional. If we focus on trying to
determine intent, it only really addresses one small aspect of
the problem that we have to deal with, and the ultimate goal is
protecting our society, our people. That is independent of
intent.
Mr. Linder. Thank you. My time has expired.
Mr. Langevin?
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hopmeier, I would like to actually continue on with the
question that the chairman raised. You have may have already
addressed this, but I would like to explore this a little more.
You recommend again that we train medical personnel in
intelligence and analysis. Are you suggesting that training
intelligence personnel in medical and biosciences be equally
effective?
You also discussed in some of your background materials the
idea of putting doctors trained in intelligence at all U.S.
embassies overseas. Can you elaborate on the benefit of such a
plan?
I welcome the other witnesses to comment as well.
Mr. Hopmeier. My pleasure.
First, let me note, there is a document that I provided to
the staff, it is not available for public dissemination, I am
afraid. It is a document from the Armed Forces Medical
Intelligence Center titled ``Medical Intelligence Tutorial.''
That document is specifically designed to train medical
personnel on what is intelligence, how to collect data and
information, and how to analyze it.
One of the most effective means our government has found in
being able to collect and understand data, not only on emerging
diseases, but also on endemic capabilities in different
nations, are the different overseas labs that our Department of
Defense maintains. We have labs throughout the world in a
number of different areas, including Bangkok, Egypt and other
regions, which were originally developed primarily to try and
understand the diseases in those regions and how they affect
military personnel.
One of the anticipated, but very valuable consequences of
having those labs distributed in many regions of the world was
the relationship that those researchers had developed with the
local public health communities, local academic and industrial
infrastructure. Dr. Franz can certainly address that much
better. He ran many of those laboratories when he was in the
military.
But I think the key benefit that came out was not just the
short-term knowledge of what diseases were endemic in any given
region, but more importantly the longer-term relationships that
have been developed between our government, the Department of
Defense and the research laboratories, and the local public
health communities, their militaries, the health officers and
personnel in those militaries, and the public personnel.
Ultimately again, we need to decide what is the best use of
scarce resources. One of my recommendations, as you noted, was
use of the embassies throughout the world to provide medical
and public health advice, but more importantly interaction and
expand the community of interaction worldwide, and not depend
solely or almost solely on the World Health Organization and
its other bodies, but be able to actively and aggressively
reach out to these other communities through information
sharing, identification of, in general, very open-source and
public knowledge, but most importantly having a structure to be
able to bring that back to those who can take action on it and
make decisions based on it.
Mr. Langevin. Would either of the other witnesses care to
comment?
Mr. Franz. I would just add that the point that Michael
makes about relationships and longstanding relationships and
building trust is so important, and that happens easily in the
medical and the scientific communities. There are a number of
instances in history where because of lack of communication,
our imaginations or our adversary's imaginations take over and
they actually think better than we do, and they were doing
things that we were not really doing, and so on.
I think that can lead or be a component in a cycle of
proliferation. I believe that because the threats of
bioterrorism and the technologies related to bioterrorism are
so grossly overlaid with those tools and human resources that
are related to emerging disease and to panic disease, this is a
real opportunity. I think we have to be a little bit careful in
making doctors spies, because we are going to undermine the
real role and undermine the relationships and the understanding
and the building that goes on.
Secondly, the point I would make in the same context is
that we sometimes I think within our intelligence community
think about we are collectors of secrets. That may work in some
technologies where we have this secret and this secret and this
secret. The biological community is so complex that I think it
is critical that we have an infrastructure or a framework on
which to hang those occasional secret dots that we do have in
order to connect the dots and bring them into context.
So I think that is another reason for the importance of
this broad understanding within our intelligence community and
a close relationship between the intelligence community and the
biological community.
Dr. Relman. I would simply answer your question with a
general question, which is what are the kinds of things we
would like to observe in order to be able to anticipate
biological threats that we face.
I would answer that by saying there are two kinds of things
we would like to observe. One is the activities, the ongoing
activities and behavior of those engaged in the life sciences,
as well as the natural state of affairs in the natural world.
We would like to, for example, in the latter, understand what
is the diversity of naturally occurring organisms, both
pathogens and beneficial organisms, in order to anticipate what
might arise or what one might be able to do with those
organisms.
Likewise, we would like to be able to know what are the
normal kinds of activities that scientists engage in around the
world? Because in both cases, what we are then looking for are
aberrations. I think this was a question asked earlier. How do
you recognize deliberate from natural? In both cases, you are
looking for aberrations from the natural state. Until you
understand this background, we cannot identify an aberration.
I think the way to do both, again, is to simply be out in
those worlds talking with, getting to know, observing
activities of people around the globe, as well as observing
nature around the globe. I know that CDC, for example, has
talked about deploying their epidemiologists to understand what
is the natural background of the microbiological organisms of
the planet.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you.
Mr. Linder. The gentleman from Connecticut is recognized.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the
ranking member for sponsoring this very interesting and very
significant discussion.
I want to refer to the staff document page four where they
quote the Silberman-Robb report as follows: ``The gap in
collection on the biological threat is largely attributable to
the fact that the community,'' that is the intelligence
community, ``is simply not well-configured to monitor the large
stream of information, much of it publicly available, relevant
to biological weapons.''
Page two, from Dr. Hopmeier, ``To come right to the point,
there exists a fundamental difference between on the one hand
the medical and biotech communities and the intelligence
community on the other hand.''
Mr. Hopmeier. Absolutely.
Mr. Simmons. To quote from Mr. Franz, ``Intelligence is
about sensitive or classified information. It is not about
sharing and not about getting credit for one's analysis and
thought. Openness is not advocated,'' et cetera, et cetera.
And then, Mr. Relman, you refer to the open-source world.
I worked for the CIA for 10 years as an operations officer,
covert agent. I spent 35 years as a military intelligence
officer. I just think we are barking up the wrong tree here. I
do not think the intelligence community is capable of taking on
this task.
I remind everybody that the Robb-Silberman report
recommended an open-source intelligence agency, an open-source
agency, an organization focusing on open sources, which they
placed in the CIA. I would not place it in the CIA. I would put
it in the Department of Homeland Security because I think it
lends itself absolutely to the mission of the Department of
Homeland Security.
When I go visit Pfizer in my district, their R&D center in
Groton, several hundred million dollars of investment in R&D,
and they tell me that advances in bioscience, for example
treating diabetes with inhalants, as opposed to injections, but
that that science and the development of that science, which is
shared around the world, has tremendous applications for
bioterrorism and bio-warfare.
I wonder why we are not simply stepping back and saying,
look, scientists do not want to be spies. They really don't. If
they did, they would have joined the CIA. They do not want to
be spies, but they do want to protect their nation. They do
want to protect their families. They do want to make their kind
of contribution to the national security.
So why is it that we continue to try to get the
intelligence community to do what it does not want to do? Why
don't we step back and say it is time to develop a new
organization which is going to be congenial to scientists,
because it will not be a spy organization, which will
contribute to the national security, which will use open
sources of information for their analysis, and which will
really be pertinent to the problem? Why don't we do that?
We have three very smart people. I would be happy to have
it out.
Mr. Hopmeier. I will take a shot at it, to begin with.
I believe first, sir, it is the idea that we are trying to
create, make doctors into spies or more broadly the context, an
analyst as a spy. I might point out that any reasonably
competent industry analyst or stock analyst, especially in the
biotechnology field, can probably answer 90 percent of the
questions and issues that we all have on our mind today. What
is the ability of industry to make vaccines? How quickly can
they ramp up? What are the inherent problems in producing those
vaccines and distributing them?
There is an enormous industry-base today built solely
around the business of collecting open source information on
different fields, very specifically the biosciences, analyzing,
interpreting and making predictions. Their purpose, frankly, is
not national security. They certainly have an interest in
protecting our nation, but their purpose more is they have
many, many hundreds of billions of dollars to invest and the
decisions that they make is to the effectiveness of industry.
The ability to produce drugs is going to affect the investment
portfolios of their customers.
I work with several of those companies. One that I am
familiar with, for example, a company called Gerson Lehrman has
nearly 160,000 medical and other technical professionals around
the world that they ask questions to, funnel the information,
and come up with conclusions, different conclusions that you
gentlemen need, but the process is there and has been
demonstrated. There is a large industrial base that has proven
that possibility. I can tell you they certainly do not consider
themselves spies, most of them, some may want to be. But for
the most part, they do in fact do intelligence collection,
analysis, and just simply based on the effectiveness of their
portfolios, seem to be very effective.
Mr. Franz. I would add that what you describe is my
experience as well, in dealing with the intelligence community
as a customer during my time at the Army's Institute of
Infectious Diseases, where we developed medical counter-
measures.
What I see is that it is very, very difficult to retain
good people in the culture, in which they are asked often to
read what looked like historical information, historical
intelligence, not actual intelligence, and try to commingle
that with the open literature if they had time, and then sort
of dumb it down for the decision-makers. That is just not a fun
job for a bright young scientist. So I see them occasionally
hiring good people, but they quickly lose them.
I think your approach with regard to the open approach to
looking at the open literature is probably more effective. Dr.
Relman mentioned the DIA Red Team. Our experience there I think
has been very positive, where it is for the most part open
communication between scientists and members of the
intelligence community. I think they appreciate it a great
deal. They learn a lot and we learn a lot in the process.
Finally, I would just add that in conjunction with your, or
sort of in parallel with your thoughts, I think exploiting or
taking advantage and using the private sector is something that
we could do in that kind of a system. We could encourage,
rather than discourage international communication and
transportation and working together. We could also probably
sensitize that community to help us in the intelligence
community to just better understand what is going on out there.
Not secrets, not classified things, just what is going on for
example that you mentioned at Pfizer and others, where new and
cutting-edge technologies are being used.
And then finally, I think also in accordance with your
point, we need to understand that intelligence is just one of
our tools in this process. It is an important one, but
especially in the field of biology, I think it is just one
wedge in our tool set.
Dr. Relman. I would echo and agree with many of the
comments of my colleagues. I keep finding myself almost a
hopeless optimist about what might be doable. It is based in
part upon some good experiences with members of the
intelligence community. I truly believe there are individuals
buried within those agencies who truly understand what really
is needed and the kinds of relationships that need to be
created, and have tried their hardest to do so. I would hate to
see them pushed aside or in any way marginalized.
But you are absolutely right. The nature of this problem is
so immense that I do not believe any self-sustaining, self-
sufficient agency or group can undertake what really is needed.
Just to put this in a different kind of context, I think
one of the most likely threats we face in the next 10 years or
15 years is not necessarily the actions of a person hell-bent
on doing harm. It is the inadvertent, irresponsible actions of
someone who was tinkering in biology. It is the next-generation
bio-hacker.
There are so many--I say this with some humility--there are
so many kids out there who are so good at biological
engineering because of kits, because of technologies. There are
going to be people who are going to simply try doing
interesting things for the fun of it.
That is where my concern is. How do you deal with that? You
need the entire community so sensitized that they recognize
when untoward or irresponsible behavior is taking place and
know what to do about their sense of this, to which they should
speak.
So given the nature of that problem, there is no one agency
that is going to be able to place bounds on and take
responsibility for this. There have to be bridges built. We
have to take advantage of those individuals that are now in a
variety of agencies who truly believe in this approach, and
empower them, and knock down these walls, make all of these
organizations and agencies talk together. Maybe it should be
unified under one administrative entity, and Homeland Security
might be a very good place for it, but it will have to be an
integrative, expansive effort, not a single contained one.
Mr. Hopmeier. Gentlemen, could I add one other comment
please?
I think that it is telling to realize that if we went back
65 years ago, we could be sitting around having this discussion
concerning physics and nuclear engineering. If we went back 20
or 25 years ago, we could be having the same discussion
concerning computer science and the Internet. We have a new
field that is evolving and developing. The intelligence
community and the rest of our government adapted to the threat
of nuclear war. It adapted to the vulnerabilities of the
Internet and computer sciences have created. And today we are
on the eve of biosciences. We may solve this problem today, but
in 10 or 15 or 20 years, there may be another problem that we
are sitting to deal with.
So I think it is instructive to note the technological
surprise, changes, space, nuclear science, biology. All of
these will continue to come up and we will have to address all
of them in some way.
Mr. Linder. The time of the gentleman is up.
The gentleman from Washington?
Mr. Dicks. The only thing I would say is, I served for 8
years on the Intelligence Committee. I can see certain
circumstances when if you have like the Soviet Union, with a
massive program, that you would have to have intelligence about
that, especially since that program was kept in secret. Let's
say a future adversary, maybe the future adversary might have a
program that would require us to have intelligence on that
program. I would think it would be helpful to have people with
some scientific background in order to look into this.
Now, if I could just switch and go to what we have now, and
get your comments a little bit on some of these entities. One
is the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center, headquartered
at Fort Detrick as a branch of the Defense DIA, and has the
mission to provide all sorts of intelligence on foreign
infectious diseases and environmental health risks, foreign
military and civilian health care systems and infrastructures,
and foreign biomedical development and life-science
technologies of military-medical significance to the U.S. armed
forces.
How would you rate that organization? Is this the one you
have been talking about?
Mr. Hopmeier. Yes, sir.
First, I think you need to realize AFMIC I happen to
consider is a very good organization. They have a long and
distinguished history, but their focus is exclusively on those
issues related to the military.
Mr. Dicks. Right.
Mr. Hopmeier. So they have the infrastructure and the
capability, but they are funded, resourced and focused on
issues directly of military importance and relevance. As a
model and as a source of process for other entities and
organizations, I think that they would be excellent.
If what you are asking is could they undertake this role
for the broader homeland security mission, I do not believe so
for two reasons. One, it would take a significant investment to
expand and increase them to have that capability, more so
perhaps than creating a new entity. Two, and more importantly,
I am afraid it would unacceptably dilute their mission and
their focus on protecting the military.
Mr. Dicks. But it is a model of an agency that has this
mission of looking at these kinds of issues, both from a
scientific and from an intelligence perspective. Isn't that
correct?
Mr. Hopmeier. Absolutely.
Mr. Dicks. Let me just move on. The Epidemic Intelligence
Service, which is located at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, how
would you rate that program? Any comments on that?
Dr. Relman. They are an outstanding group with, again, a
somewhat different mission. Their mission is to describe and
explain natural events of infectious origin and to understand
the epidemiology of the world of infectious agents around the
globe. They focus, of course, on the United States. They have
excellent skill sets in understanding patterns and recognizing
perturbed or aberrant patterns.
But their expertise is not, for example, in technology, in
the future of the biological sciences and their impact on what
might be now advanced or reengineered threats.
Mr. Dicks. If you were going to create a new entity at the
Department of Homeland Security, what would you want it to be
like? What kind of capabilities would you like it to have?
Dr. Relman. Again, I think it depends upon its mission. If
it is to anticipate this enormous spectrum of potential
threats--
Mr. Dicks. Right.
Dr. Relman. --it must have several features.
It must understand how we go about describing and
understanding the natural world. So it would have to be
epidemiologists of the CDC sort. It would have to understand
the scientific basis for how we understand these entities. It
would have to include academic and private sector scientists.
And it would have to understand how to anticipate trajectories
in technologies in sciences 10 or 15 years out. That, too,
would include a wide variety of people with different expertise
and disciplines from a variety of sectors. It is really a
compilation of many kinds of agencies.
Mr. Dicks. And it would have to be able to relate, I
assume, to the CDC, to the World Health Organization, to NIH,
to all these entities that are out there following these issues
on a day-by-day basis. I agree there with the gentleman that
ought to be in the open, I think, and I think you could get a
lot of information, just like we have been following the avian
flu and watched what happened with SARS. It was not handled
properly by the PRC.
It just seems to me that we this ought to be done at the
Department of Homeland Security, and have it work with these
agencies. It would develop and evolve, but it would be able to
work with all these other existing entities, and that would be
a great way to start, if we were going to do something.
Dr. Relman. If I could just interject, there is, of course,
as you I am sure know, the Biological Threat Characterization
Center as part of DHS. They have part of that as their mission,
but in my humble opinion, it is a limited effort. It is a very
limited and narrow effort right now.
Mr. Dicks. Dr. Franz or anyone else like to comment on
this?
Mr. Franz. I would agree. These areas are so overlapping.
I often define ``biological terrorism'' as emerging
infectious disease plus intent. Everything that David has said
and that you have said I think is right on-target. We have go
to integrate all this. Back in the mid-1990s or so, AFMIC,
before it went to DIA, covered both the natural threats, which
I think is its focus today, as well as the bio-warfare threats.
We were not thinking about terrorism. I think that was very
useful to have that kind of an integrated agency.
Today, the bio-warfare has sort of moved to DIA, and AFMIC
has retained its mission primarily of looking at natural
threats, and again to the force, as Michael said. So I think we
need to, rather than separate, we need to integrate in all of
these areas to bring the science and the intelligence, where
possible, together.
Mr. Dicks. We have done these counter-terrorism centers,
counter-proliferation centers. I could see a center on this
issue that would be kind of the repository for all the efforts
that are going on in the government. They would pull it all
together in this center at DHS. It seems to me that would be a
very logical thing to do.
Mr. Hopmeier. I would agree, with one addition, sir. AFMIC,
unlike many of the other research centers, not only is able to
collect and analyze data, but its output. Ultimately what comes
out of a center, an agency has over many years evolved to
actually be something useful, or what we would refer to as
actionable. When AFMIC collects data, one of the things that
comes out is information, reports, documents that a battlefield
commander up through the Secretary of Defense or the President
himself, if necessary, can look at, interpret and take an
action on.
Part of the problem in the biosciences is I do not think
that in the civilian community we have evolved to that point.
If we take a look at the expedition of the current pandemic flu
plan, it is a wonderful policy. It has vague guidelines, some
specific data, but it is not something that a community, a
police force, a different government agency can actually take
specific action on.
So I would extend your observation to be that not only do
we have to analyze and collect intelligence, we have to be able
to produce something that is actionable and of value other than
as an interesting academic exercise.
Mr. Dicks. To the first responders around the country?
Mr. Hopmeier. At all levels. The first responders
absolutely, but it may be CDC or HHS. DHS attempted with its 15
scenarios to prevent a baseline for planning at all levels of
the government, whether you agree or disagree is immaterial.
But they provided a set of basic scenarios and threats to
plan to, all the way from the very lowest to the highest level.
If we embark on an area of doing intelligence for the
biosciences, I think we have to keep firmly in mind what the
goal is. The goal is to be able to do something with that data.
Mr. Dicks. Thank you.
Mr. Linder. We will have another round, too.
Dr. Franz, does each American embassy have a medical
officer?
Mr. Franz. I do not know.
Mr. Hopmeier. There is a medical person. However, it is not
frequently a physician. In many cases, I believe they actually
use the indigenous personnel. They hire out to local personnel.
Mr. Linder. Since each embassy has a lot of employees, many
of whom are hired locally, and they are in the community at all
times, if we focused on the medical personnel in the embassy to
focus on open source information, would that be helpful?
Mr. Franz. I think it probably would to some degree. That
would be part of the solution. I do not think it would be a
really comprehensive solution because of the nature of the
work. At least in the one embassy that I have been closely
involved with, the medical person probably would not know as
much about what is going on in that country as we might hope,
certainly not as much as scientists or public health
individuals who are collaborating with the population of that
country. But it certainly could be a piece of the puzzle.
Mr. Linder. The director of the CDC tells me that she has
been approached by several international firms who are
concerned about these kinds of natural outbreaks because of the
cost to their employees and the cost to their bottom line.
Would there be any interest, do you think, in approaching
some of these people who have headquarters here, but who have
thousands and thousands of employees in other countries? Could
we train them to look for things, I guess is the question.
Mr. Franz. I have been involved in other initiatives, or am
involved in another initiatives related to multinational
companies and trying to get them involved in sort of
undermining the popular support for terrorism by being good
citizens and so on in other countries. You use the right word.
The bottom line is what is really important in persuading or in
discussions with these groups.
I think it depends a little bit on the culture of the
specific organization you are going to. Some are much more
interested than others. But that is part of this sort of loose,
but very broad network that I am alluding to in my second point
with regard to who we need to sensitive, who we need to work
with. Integration is the key. We have to got to pull it all
together.
Dr. Relman. There is an interesting initiative by Terence
Taylor from the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
He and his colleagues, he is based here in Washington as well
as London, have been trying to get together groups of CEOs from
large multinational corporations and talk about ways of
sensitizing their workers to issues of biological security.
It has been I think very encouraging, the reception that he
has had from a number of companies, not all, because they see
it as part of their own self-interest to prevent something
untoward from arising from their own collaborative activities
or from their own people, as well as the consequences for their
own people overseas. So I think that is, again, one piece of a
network.
Another kind of network is the public health distributed
global network. I will give you an example. The French have a
long history of investment in their Pasteur Institute. The
Pasteur Institute has satellites around the globe. They have
one in Tehran. They have one in Dakar, Senegal. At each of
these places, they have longstanding working relationships with
local scientists. If I wanted to know what was going on in
Tehran today, the first place I would go would be the Pasteur
Institute in Tehran.
If we had that kind of satellite public health relationship
with similar kinds of organizations around the globe, through
our CDC for example, that would be immensely helpful.
Mr. Linder. CDC is currently in 47 nations around the globe
with very good relationships with the local health agencies.
Dr. Relman, you referred two or three times now to state-
of-the-art technology in biosciences. Explain that to me.
Dr. Relman. The state-of-the-art, of course, is a moving
edge, but it is an interface between multiple disciplines. It
is an evolving kind of science and technology that is
discovery-oriented, unpredictable and highly dynamic. But that
frontier changes the way in which science and technology are
executed, and it changes the way we think about the potential
future threats. It is hard to operate at that frontier, at that
edge, unless you are out there talking constantly with your
colleagues and thinking about the thoughts that they have
shared with you.
Mr. Linder. Dr. Franz, would it be in our interest to
follow some of these scientists who are very, very well trained
in life science, microbiology or genetic engineering, who are
trained in London and then moved to Pakistan? Would it be in
our interest to know where these people were, or are there too
many of them to know who they are?
Mr. Franz. The best example I am familiar with with regard
to attempting to do that was the focus of the Nunn-Lugar
Program in the former Soviet Union. I think it was very
difficult to track individual scientists, at least down beyond
a certain level.
One of my concerns related to that today is that if you go
to any university in the U.S. and talk to the registrar or to
the dean of the graduate school, you will find that we are not
training as many people from overseas as we used to. They are
now going to France or to Germany or other places.
I think that we are losing an opportunity there. Certainly,
we have to be careful who we let into the country and so on,
but I think in biology the situation is such that barbed wire
fences and even paper fences that we put up do not always make
us safer. So I think following scientists or working with
scientists is, as you suggested, very important.
I am going to leave with the staff a recent report. It is
actually just a pre-publication copy. I chair a standing
committee at the National Academy on our scientific
relationships with the former weapons programs of the Soviet
Union, Biopreparat in the Ministry of Defense, which we are not
in, but we are in Biopreparat and all over that.
I have come to a point of believing that, I call it bio-
warfare in our rearview mirror. I think we need to be looking
forward to ways of collaborating in disease surveillance,
international disease surveillance, bringing their programs
into the world community, reporting to the WHO; technologies,
working together on technologies; working together on public
health and infectious diseases. That is essentially the essence
of this report, which is entitled Biological Science and
Biotechnology in Russia: Controlling Disease and Enhancing
Security.
I think as we have moved in that direction, I have seen a
lot more openness. Now, it does not make us totally safe and it
does not mean there is not a program within the MOD, but I
think that I have seen a lot more openness as we have worked
together on these common problems.
Mr. Linder. Thank you.
The gentleman from Rhode Island?
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Your testimony today has been fascinating. I appreciate
what you had to say.
I want to back to Dr. Hopmeier, if I could. You mentioned
that you feel that the failure of the Chiron Company to provide
flu vaccine last winter and now the avian influenza situation
are examples of intelligence failings. With respect to avian
flu, certain countries were not exactly forthcoming with
information.
Can you elaborate on this as an intelligence failing and
how would intelligence have helped weather the Chiron
situation, in particular, or aid us in dealing with avian flu
and influenza issues now?
The other thing I will ask, on Tuesday the President
announced his plan to combat the avian flu epidemic. One part
of the plan was to enhance bio-surveillance, meaning worldwide
epidemiology and providing detection in as near real-time as
possible.
I will ask each of you, while everyone agrees it is a good
idea, I am interested in how long it is actually going to take
to build that worldwide bio-surveillance capacity.
Mr. Hopmeier. To address your first question, the Chiron
and the avian flu are examples of the two widely disparate
applications of intelligence I mentioned earlier. In Chiron, it
was a biosciences, a technology failing and problem.
To take an analogy, if we have a dependence on a key
material, cobalt, for example, or oil, we would regularly and
consistently track not only all of the producers and
manufacturers and refiners of oil, as one example, but the
sources of key materials, parts, trained personnel, whether
they are following the plans and procedures one would expect
for regular maintenance and ongoing operations. We would know
well in advance if a problem were developing with a key oil
refinery.
Mr. Shays. Could the gentleman just define what ``we''
means?
Mr. Hopmeier. I am sorry; forgive me. The general
community, the national security community, including the
intelligence community.
If I were following a strategic material, for example, I
would specifically look in oil to the Department of Energy and
their tracking of key refineries and key sources of material;
for another like chromium or cobalt, it would be one aspect of
the intelligence community or the Department of Defense, if
they have the key mission. I am using the broadest term of the
U.S. government. I apologize for not being clear.
I think that that derives from the recognition that there
are key materials that are considered strategic assets or
strategic materials. We have never looked at that. That seems
in pharmaceuticals to be a strategic asset key to our national
security, so the infrastructure that has traditionally gone
with those does not exist and is not there. If it had been,
there have since, in retrospect, been many signs and indicators
associated with Chiron and its inability to meet its
obligations last year that would have told us early. Seeing
that would have been one part of it; being able to take action
would have been another.
In the case of the H5N1 or any other expanding strain of
flu or pathogen for that matter throughout the world,
surveillance, environmental monitoring, tracking of the changes
of disease and disease patterns throughout the world give us
early indications of potential problems of disease. We know
that H5N1 has been known to exist for a number of years,
``we,'' the academic community. We know roughly how it would be
able to mutate. In fact, the current pandemic plan was under
development for 5 or 6 years.
It has suddenly taken a trigger for us to realize that we
need to look back at the signs and indicators we had in the
past and come to the conclusion that yes, there was a warning
many years ago, but we did not have the process or the ability
to be able to exploit and take action years in advance of the
problem, so we are now forced back up against the wall to try
and address the problem at the very last minute.
I think that answers your key question, sir.
Mr. Langevin. Yes, thank you.
With respect to the timeframe, though, of developing a
real-time bio-surveillance capacity. I would like each of you
to step up.
Mr. Franz. A couple of issues there. I am very interested
in that approach I think it is necessary. There are a couple of
barriers that I see.
One is economic. If you recall in the early to mid-1990s,
there was a plague outbreak in India. It was really hard to get
information about that. It is not good advertising for tourism,
for example, to advertise that you have a plague outbreak in
your country.
The other one is sort of cultural. I think there is a key
point that I would like to make with regard to this worldwide
disease surveillance program. I think it needs to be a disease
surveillance program. The best example I can give is our
experience from West Nile, where we had sort of a smokestack or
a siloed system. Crows were dying in New York City in June of
1999, I think it was, and humans were dying in New York City at
the same time, but it took us until September to make a
definitive diagnosis that it was West Nile, to some degree
because we were looking for animal disease in crows and we were
looking for human disease in humans, and it is very important
to integrate that.
I work with both the Ministry of Health in Russia and the
Ministry of Agriculture and just spent some time with both
ministries about 10 days ago. They have now learned their
lesson, I believe, with regard to integrating and looking for
disease, and not for animal disease here and human disease
there. We had the wakeup call in 1999, but those are cultures
that are in silos that are very hard to break down.
It is a little bit like getting the intelligence community
and the scientific community together. We need to get the ag
community and the human disease community together and working
very closely because about 75 percent of emerging diseases are
zoonotic, that is diseases that are transmissible between
humans and animals.
Dr. Relman. Just a few additional comments about your
question. I agree with everything that has been said. The two
challenges, of course, are both environmental and medical. We
would like to know, for instance in this case, what the viruses
are that are out there and how they are evolving. We also would
like to know what disease activity looks like and its cause.
There is one additional technical barrier I will just bring
to your attention. We are not very good at clinical
microbiological diagnosis right now. We have a clinical
definition of influenza or flu-like illness. It is very non-
specific. We can detect the influenza virus in a person
certainly, but there is an attendant delay. It is not rapid.
The ability to then sequence and understand the nature of the
virus is even longer.
I would suggest that to make the timeline a satisfactory
timeline, we need to also put emphasis on early disease
diagnosis. There are some technologies and science that would
radically change the way in which we recognize early disease as
due to X, Y, or Z. So I guess in answer to your question, 1 to
2 years now for characterizing viruses in various sites,
putting the political and economic issues aside. But for
specific early clinical diagnosis, I think we are still 3 to 5
years away at best.
Mr. Hopmeier. If I could add one comment on surveillance. I
think there is frequently a very fundamental misunderstanding
of what is medical surveillance versus environmental
surveillance and how they come together. You, I believe,
referred to it as real-time worldwide surveillance.
If I take a look at medical surveillance and the concept of
real-time, is real-time determined from the point at which
somebody is exposed to a disease, they become infected, sick,
enter a laboratory, have a test done, have the result reported?
Depending on the disease and your end-state of definition, that
could be a difference of more than 2 weeks. We do not have a
common understanding of terminology and what surveillance
means.
Further, and even more fundamentally, I believe
surveillance is used as a panacea, as a silver bullet without a
clear understanding of why we have it or what we are going to
do with the information we get.
An example I have used many times, set aside the technology
question completely. Forget issues of privacy; forget how
rapidly we can detect a piece of information. If I was able to
do all of that perfectly in real-time, what does the
information provide you? How do you plan on using that data?
For the most part, surveillance has been very technology-
driven. We have a new capability to measure the sale of over-
the-counter drugs. Let's survey it and collect data. We have
ICD-9 codes for syndromic surveillance. Let's collect all that
data into one place or a number of emergency room beds.
Very, very little thought has been given to why do we do
surveillance, how will we use that information, and using those
requirements to drive the evolution of the capability.
Mr. Linder. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from Connecticut?
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Laughter.]
I do have a question about Plum Island, but because the
distinguished vice chairman of the full committee has arrived,
my colleague from Connecticut, I yield my 5 minutes to my
colleague from Connecticut.
Mr. Shays. I am blushing.
First, to you, Mr. Chairman, I consider the work you have
done, with your ranking member, outstanding.
I have been involved in this issue a long time, with my
National Security Subcommittee. I consider this committee, its
task dealing with nuclear and biological, hugely important. The
likelihood of such attack is small, but the consequence is
almost beyond comprehension, if attacks happen.
I want to side with what I believe my colleague from
Connecticut has said, and that is that we need to know the
private, basically, government data with the public data. If we
do not, we are going to fail. I also think that he is headed in
the direction of basically saying it comes out of the
intelligence community, and should be somewhere with DHS, which
then gets me to my interest in getting your view of the World
Health Organization. I first want to say to you that I feel
like it is an underutilized organization. I feel like it is
underfunded. The folks that I meet there are incredibly
intelligent and dedicated. They will literally go to the
deepest parts of the world with an outbreak, not knowing what
the consequence may be.
So I would like you to speak more specifically as to how
the World Health Organization plays a role in the intelligence-
gathering. Is that something that has already been discussed?
Okay.
Mr. Hopmeier. I have done a good deal of work, in fact I am
a senior advisor with the Office of Deliberate Epidemics within
the World Health Organization. That office was set up about 3
years ago specifically to look at the issue of the changes, the
differences that one would see in the issue of a deliberate
epidemic, a bioterrorism or bio-warfare incident versus an
actual outbreak.
The key difference, frankly, had nothing to do with
response so much as who was in charge. In the case of a
naturally occurring epidemic of one sort of another, it would
almost be purely ministries of health or the public health
organizations. In the case of a deliberate incident, suddenly
it takes on national security overtones and involves
intelligence and law enforcement and such.
The biggest problem within the WHO is again a cultural one.
They are not used to thinking in those terms. They are an
almost purely academic organization. I can speak from very
personal and first-hand experience some of the difficulties we
have had trying to get the management, Dr. Lee and the senior
staff of ADGs there to understand and accept that this is a key
issue.
Mr. Shays. Let me just put affirmation on that. A few years
ago, my staff and I went to the World Health Organization and
requested a meeting to understand how they were dealing with
pathogens that may be incentivized by humans, in other words,
weapons. They did not know what I was talking about. So we
specifically requested, we went below management and set up
this meeting, and then we invited the head of the World Health
Organization to sit in. He had all his parts there. It was
stunning what the people down below knew and were thinking
about, and it was just like he was in a foreign country. He was
shocked to see this. We were pleased that at least down below
they were thinking about it.
Mr. Hopmeier. I have observed that very directly. I believe
that there are some changes for the better. Do you gentleman
know Dr. Ken Bernard? He used to be the senior medical adviser
on the National Security Council. He has since retired and is
currently a special adviser to Dr. Lee, the director general of
WHO. That indicates to me that there is some interest at the
highest level.
Mr. Shays. Let me interrupt that. What do we do to, first
off, is there a need? If you could just all three quickly. Is
there a need to get the World Health Organization more engaged?
The next question is, in the short answer, how do we do it, if
the answer is yes? Is there a need?
Mr. Hopmeier. Yes, sir, there is.
Mr. Shays. Okay. Let me just go through. Is there a need to
get the World Health Organization more involved in this?
Mr. Franz. Yes. I would like to elaborate very briefly.
Mr. Shays. I will come back to you.
Mr. Franz. Okay.
Dr. Relman. Absolutely, yes.
Mr. Shays. Okay. Elaborate.
Mr. Franz. I, working again with the Russians, for example,
or with other countries talking about international disease
surveillance, they do not like to hear a ``made in the USA''
disease surveillance program. So I think it is very important,
whether it is agriculture or human health that we go to an
international body. That gives them a great deal of comfort. We
are more likely to gain information about what is going on if
it goes through the WHO than if we try to collect it.
Mr. Shays. Anybody else want to elaborate quickly as to how
we can incentivize them to be involved?
Mr. Franz. I would just add that I also work, in fact I am
going to be in Geneva, I will be meeting with Ken and with the
people that do the deliberate epidemics next week.
Mr. Shays. First off, I envy you. Nice place to go.
Mr. Franz. It is.
What I find there is that it is one person and one program,
like one riot and one ranger. They just are so under-resourced
and they are dependent. The project I am working on them with
is funded by the Sloan Foundation to do things related to what
we are talking about. So resourcing is a huge problem.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. WHO needs resources and funds.
Second, a much more productive relationship with the working
life-science research community. They have tended to be
somewhat separated from that big worldwide community.
Thank you.
Mr. Hopmeier. Yes, sir. I believe resources are important,
but more importantly is more than paying lip service to the
importance of deliberate epidemics. I can tell you from
personal knowledge and experience, while we have said at a very
high level, the secretary level, that it is an important issue,
WHO is then left to set its own internal priorities. And
frankly, deliberate epidemics is a low priority. We do not
enforce with other nations out belief of what is important, and
it gets lost in the bureaucracy very frequently.
Mr. Shays. Thank you all very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Linder. The gentleman from Washington?
Mr. Dicks. Have you gentlemen been following the Bioshield
Program at all?
Dr. Relman. Peripherally.
Mr. Franz. Yes, very much so.
Mr. Dicks. Okay. I am very concerned this program is not
getting off the ground. For example, should we put into place
deadlines for the DHS to finish material threat assessments on
all 60 of the biological agents listed on the CDC Web site?
Mr. Hopmeier. I personally do not believe putting in place
arbitrary deadlines, no matter how well-founded, is the answer.
I think the primary shortcoming is a lack of specific process
and understanding. We have a vague mission: here are the
threats, which are most important, how to address them. There
is no specificity as to how to prioritize those threats or what
we mean and define by addressing them.
Simply putting in place deadlines I do not think will
answer the fundamental problem here.
Mr. Dicks. What concerns me is that only four of the
material threat assessments have been done at this juncture.
Mr. Franz. I personally think that when you are talking
about Bioshield, you are by definition talking about medical
counter-measures.
Mr. Dicks. Right.
Mr. Franz. Specific medical counter-measures for emerging
disease or for bioterrorism, there will be I believe a very
small number of agents for which we can develop counter-
measures. I have a set of outliers in my mind. I call them
outliers, smallpox, anthrax and foot and mouth disease. Foot
and mouth disease is not a human pathogen, but an animal
pathogen and economic threat. Those I can see my way forward,
developing vaccines for. There is a good reason to have a
vaccine for anthrax. There is a good reason to have a vaccine
for smallpox, technically and medically.
You get very far down that list and in our current system
where it takes 6, 8, or 10 years in the tech base and 10 or 12
or 15 years in advanced development and production, it is just
not feasible to use a prophylactic medical counter-measure to
protect against a long list of threat agents. If you look at
the concept of operation, there is just not a way to use them.
I think on the other hand, broad-spectrum antibiotics and
broad-spectrum anti-viral drugs, which can be used
therapeutically, are very useful. I do not know what the law
says now with regard to dual-use. Initially, it said we can
only spend this money on drugs that are not dual-use, orphan
drugs that are useful only for terrorist incidents, and I am
not sure whether that has been changed.
Mr. Dicks. Do any of you follow the radiation issues?
Mr. Hopmeier. I have a little.
Mr. Dicks. That is one where there are companies out there
that have tried to work with the DHS and with HHS, and they
just have totally been frustrated by the approach that is being
taken. They have spent millions of dollars. They have asked for
a contract, assuming that they can get through the FDA
procedures. And they have just struck out with the department.
To me, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of lives
if we do not have some kind of medical thing you can take
within a certain number of hours after an attack. For the
department to do nothing about this is kind of shocking to me.
Mr. Hopmeier. I would not say that they are doing nothing,
sir. I think that the problem is that they are mired in a
bureaucracy which is not applicable to this arena. The
underlying premise for Bioshield was, one, that there was a
problem in production and incentivizing the manufacture of
limited-use counter-measures, orphan drugs, if you will. That
is correct and I absolutely agree with it.
The second part of that was that the simple solution was
let's set aside a pot of money and give them a little bit more
money. That I think is fundamentally wrong. It is not an issue
of any level of funding that our government could actually
appropriate and apply.
To put it quite frankly and bluntly, the entire United
States of America is not a large enough market for these drugs
to justify real economic interest within these industries. If
we are going to try and incentivize them, we have to truly
understand what drives them, the size of their market, and work
with them, not try and artificially impose a requirement. Here
is $5.8 billion over 10 years. Frankly, gentlemen, that is
nothing in the pharmaceutical industry, for everything.
We need to be more intelligent and more enlightened about
how they work, what they need, and how to work with them. This
is not the Department of Defense in the 1970s where it could
call the tune for everything. The markets are just much, much
larger than we are.
Mr. Dicks. From the military perspective, should the
military have these shots that can be taken to protect people
from radiation syndrome?
Mr. Franz. I do not know that topic very well to comment,
sir.
Mr. Dicks. All right.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Linder. Mr. Simmons is recognized.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Again, congratulations.
Mr. Shays. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman. Isn't it my time?
[Laughter.]
I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Simmons. Boy, so congenial. Great. I thank the
gentleman for yielding to me.
Mr. Shays. The gentleman is welcome.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman and the Ranking
Member, for this very interesting and far-reaching discussion
of a critically important issue.
I would like, if I could for a moment, to kind of bring it
back down to an issue of particular interest to me.
Foot and mouth disease was mentioned. I believe one of the
few areas of the country, maybe the only area in the country
where we do extensive research on foot and mouth disease is at
the Plum Island Animal Research Center on Plum Island, New
York. This activity used to be supported by Agriculture. It was
transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. The
department is currently undergoing an examination of how it is
going to be doing a lot of research.
There is some discussion of whether Plum Island will be
closed; whether research on hoof and mouth disease should be
moved to the Midwest somewhere. Ames, Iowa does not seem to be
a good idea to me. That is where you have a lot of hogs and a
lot of other cloven-hoofed animals. Whereas currently, Plum
Island is surrounded by a moat of Long Island Sound, which is
pretty safe.
Plum Island, the Animal Research Institute, should this
become more of a center in the Department of Homeland Security
for bioterrorism research and analysis? Can we build on this?
Do you feel that the department really has a mission for this
facility at this point in time? Is there value in building
around what we have already created at Plum Island, but enhance
it based on the current mission of the Department of Homeland
Security to defend us against a bioterrorist threat?
Mr. Franz. I have given some thought to the agricultural
threat problem. I mentioned it in my short list of outliers.
Mr. Simmons. Yes, you did. One was foot and mouth disease.
Mr. Franz. When we are talking about agriculture, we are
thinking about dollars not about people's lives, for the most
part. These are not zoonotics. Foot and mouth disease is a
disease of animals, and the estimates I have seen are $40
billion to $60 billion should we have an outbreak in this
country. So you can measure it in dollars, not in human lives.
I believe that is one that we should do everything we can
to deal with once we have an outbreak. It is so easy, if you
see in my written statement, I talk about a spectrum of easy-
to-hard for a terrorist group. Foot and mouth disease is this
much material, pretty stable, carried across from Europe or
Asia or Africa today, and wiped on the nose of a friendly dairy
cow in Iowa and it takes off. It is the most contagious and one
of the most infectious organisms that we know. So I think it is
one that we really need to think about.
I do not think it has to be protected by a moat. As you may
know, I ran USAMRIID, the Army's Institute of Infectious
Diseases, where we have a lot of bad bugs. I believe we are
capable of containing that organism within walls with
appropriate handling systems and procedures and facilities and
equipment. That is probably not the argument here today, but I
think we can work it in other places within the country safely.
With regard to Plum Island's role as a bioterrorism threat
evaluation center, I think it is part of that hub-and-spoke
model that DHS has and will eventually have a building and will
become the center of. I think that they need to work closely,
but I would be concerned about taking the scarce resources that
we have at Plum Island and focusing them too much on threat
analysis and threat characteristics. I think they need to be
working on counter-measures and let the threat people tell them
what they believe the counter-measures are that need to be
developed.
Mr. Simmons. I thank the gentleman.
I yield back.
Thank you all very much.
Mr. Linder. Thank you very much for your time. Of all the
subcommittee hearings we have sat through, this has been the
most interesting to me. We may be talking to you again.
Without objection, the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:38 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
BIOSCIENCE AND THE INTELLIGENCE
COMMUNITY: CLOSING THE GAP
PART II
----------
Thursday, May 4, 2006
u.s. House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear
and Biological Attack,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:50 p.m., in
Room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Linder
[chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Linder, Langevin, and Norton.
Mr. Linder. The Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and
Biological Attack will come to order. We are here to hear
testimony on ``BioScience and the Intelligence Community (Part
II): Closing the Gap.''
I want to thank our distinguished panel of witnesses for
being here today. Last November this subcommittee heard from
academic experts about the continuous link between the
Bioscience and Intelligence Communities. During that hearing
the witnesses gave us an image of an intelligence community
that is increasingly hard pressed to face the explosion of
biotechnology, making it more difficult to identify and
mitigate biologic threats.
The testimony highlights what I consider to be a very real
problem. As we know, the science community is inherently open,
and the free flow of ideas is key to developing new and
innovative technologies. Their openness, however, has potential
to provide sensitive information to individuals who wish to use
that information for harmful purposes.
In fact, on Tuesday U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan
warned that although biotechnology advances could help
eliminate infectious diseases, it could also bring incalculable
harm and be put to destructive use by those who seek to develop
designer diseases and pathogens.
This is where the Intelligence Community has to come into
the picture. Their unique capabilities and understanding of
bioterrorists and other threats can be strengthened by a better
link to the Biosciences Community. As we heard in November, we
must attract cutting edge bioscientists to the Intelligence
Community and be able to retain their expertise on a continual
basis.
This increase will facilitate an integration of knowledge
held by the scientific community around new potentially
hazardous developments in biotechnology with risks defined by
the Intelligence Community. Intelligence, for example, is
needed to either confirm or allay our fear that new
biotechnology will create a super germ, as well as intelligence
is crucial to guiding our assessment of risk and identifying
those specific threat agents for which we need new drugs or new
detection systems. Finally, intelligence is needed to find
people.
I have said many times in this committee that the ways to
harm Americans are infinite and the agents to do so are
infinite. The people willing to do damage are finite. Perhaps
we should spend more time and money looking for people rather
than things.
Our perspective today comes from the U.S. Intelligence
Community, which is tasked with strengthening the relationship
between it and the Bioscience Community. If we are to prevent
future bioterrorist attacks on this country, we must develop a
knowledge base within that community in the area of biosciences
and guide the gathering of intelligence to evaluate it and
assess its impact.
I look forward to hearing what our witnesses have to say
about this issue today. We may learn more about what the U.S.
Government is actually doing to bridge this gap and what
Congress if anything could can and should do to help.
I recognize my friend from Rhode Island, Mr. Langevin, for
an opening statement.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I welcome our
witnesses here today and thank you for appearing before us.
Today's hearing, BioScience and the Intelligence Community, is
a continuation of a hearing this subcommittee held in November.
At that time members of the subcommittee were introduced to a
topic that many of us might not have thought of before, the
idea of medical and biological intelligence.
Although it is not as widespread a practice as some other
intelligence gathering, there are those within the Intelligence
Community who are familiar with the collection and analysis of
this type of information, and we are fortunate to have these
experts here today to describe their activities and to help us
understand how biointelligence capabilities might be improved.
I know from my service on the House Armed Services
Committee the importance the military places on medical
intelligence. It is crucial for a battlefield commander to have
a clear picture of all the hazards that his troops may face.
Often this includes not only the capabilities of the enemy's
weapons, but also the local epidemiology. Commanders must know
how safe the local water supply is. Should soldiers be aware of
communicable diseases that he must protect them against? Does
the enemy possess chemical or biological weapons capabilities?
If so, what is the most effective countermeasure?
The medical and bioscience intelligence professionals in
the military can answer these questions. There are lessons that
can be learned from the military's approach to protect not just
our military men and women, but also our civilian population as
well.
Of course, there are differences. For example, if a
military commander is told that his soldiers will be operating
in the area where anthrax is endemic among animals, such as
Afghanistan, he can simply order his troops to be vaccinated.
While I am sure that there are many useful lessons we can learn
from the military, I also know that we cannot apply all of the
systems and procedures directly to the civilian side.
I am also interested to know what these similarities and
differences are between bioweapons and naturally occurring
diseases. For example, will systems used to detect and defend
against bioweapons also be effective for naturally occurring
diseases?
From what I have heard, the seriousness of a potential
avian flu pandemic is much greater within scenarios I have seen
for a possible bioweapons attack. While this committee and the
Department of Homeland Security are more focused on intentional
attacks rather than natural catastrophes, we hope that we can
leverage our practices so they will be helpful for either
eventuality.
I am convinced that infectious diseases, both intentional
and naturally occurring, present one of the most serious
threats that this Nation faces. I certainly look forward to an
open and informative discussion today, and I want to understand
the activities of the Intelligence Community in this area, and
I certainly hope that we can figure out a way to improve our
national biointelligence capabilities.
Once again, I want to thank our witnesses for being here. I
certainly look forward to your testimony.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Linder. Thank you. Our witnesses today bring us some
information on this issue.
Ambassador Kenneth Brill, Director, National
Counterproliferation Center, Office of the Director of National
Intelligence. Charles Allen, the Chief Intelligence Officer of
the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Bruce Pease, the
Director of Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms
Control, for the Central Intelligence Agency, and Dr. Alan
MacDougall, Chief, Counterproliferation Support Office with the
Defense Intelligence Agency.
I will remind each of the witnesses that your written
statements will be part of the record without objection. We
would urge you to summarize.
Ambassador Brill.
STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR KENNETH BRILL, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
COUNTERPROLIFERATION CENTER, OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL
INTELLIGENCE
Mr. Brill. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and ranking
member. I very much appreciate the invitation here today and I
am pleased to discuss steps that the National
Counterproliferation Center is taking to address some of the
recommendations put forward on the intelligence capabilities of
the United States regarding weapons of mass destruction on the
BW topic, and thereby enhancing the ability of the Intelligence
Community to meet the threat posed by the proliferation of
biological weapons and related technologies.
Let me begin today by underscoring what role NCPC plays on
issues like biothreats. Expertise and analysis and collection
resides in CIA, DIA, DHS, NSA and other elements of the
Intelligence Community. NCPC's role is to ensure that there is
an integrated effort throughout the community against key
counterproliferation priorities and to promote partnerships
among elements of the Intelligence Community, the non-
Intelligence Community, government agencies and experts outside
of government.
This role is critical as counterproliferation clearly
requires a team effort, and nowhere is this more true in the
area of biological threats to U.S. national security. Today I
will discuss NCPC's efforts to better and strengthen the IC's
work on biological threats. I will review steps we are taking
to build partnerships within the U.S. Government and with
biological experts outside of government and to discuss plans
to strengthen the IC's life sciences workforce.
The major challenge for the IC in dealing with bio-related
issues is research and development applications and
technologies that are completely dual use. That is to say,
legitimate research that might, and I emphasize might, be
misused to cause harm to public health and homeland and
national security. The IC has written numerous assessments so
that the potential impact of existing and emerging technologies
related to biological weapons proliferation, as these
technologies are developed from or applied to the life
sciences.
These assessments utilized the talented in-house scientific
expertise of our IC analysts and scientists, and also drew on
the advice of outside technical experts.
Although some believe that we will better understand the
threats we face from the offensive use of biological agents
only if we follow technological advances that have the
potential to be misused and track those working in these areas.
Our experience indicate that this is a strategy of looking for
hay in a haystack.
The key questions for the Intelligence Community are
primarily not highly technical in nature. We must determine if
a state adversary has the intent to establish, maintain, or
acquire a BW program, because a country of concern typically
will also have dual-use capabilities in those areas.
Some nonstate actors such as al-Qa'ida have publicly stated
they have the intent to have an offensive biologic capability,
and the IC must constantly monitor the plans and capabilities
of these groups in order both to block the acquisition of such
a capability as well as determine their plans for using such
capability as they acquire it.
Focusing on technology alone will not answer these
questions. I agree with you, sir, it can lead to speculation
based on nightmare scenarios that are not necessarily grounded
in reality.
Another challenge facing the IC is that biological threat
agents go beyond manmade substances. A global pandemic would
have dramatically negative consequences for the national
security interest of the United States. While such a pandemic
would be largely dealt with by those U.S. Government agencies
concerned with domestic and international public health issues,
the IC would be looked to for actionable medical intelligence
about the spread of pandemic diseases that would not be
available publicly for one reason or another.
The IC would also be called upon to provide analysis to
support the efforts of U.S. Government Public Health and other
agencies. Thus, while the IC would not be a primary actor in
dealing with a pandemic situation, it needs to be prepared to
play an important supporting role.
The National Counterproliferation Center is working with
Intelligence Community agencies to establish new partnerships
and relationships with the biologic and public health
communities to ensure that it is prepared to meet the various
challenges of biological threats to the United States.
Let me outline for you briefly now a few of the steps that
we are taking in this regard. First, and consistent with the
recommendations of the WMD Commission's report, NCPC has
established the position of a senior adviser for biological
issues. Dr. Lawrence Kerr has recently assumed this position
and is accompanying me today. Dr. Kerr has been tasked to
enhance the partnership of the IC with non-U.S. Government
sectors, which, as you have noted, both you and the ranking
member have noted, have incredible scientific and technical
expertise to support and improve our overall intelligence of
biological threats.
An important part of his partnership building efforts will
be working with IC agencies and nongovernmental experts to
establish the Intelligence Community's first broadly focused
biological advisory group. This group will report to the
Director of National Intelligence through me as being
established to serve the Intelligence Community as a whole.
NCPC shall convene this group of nongovernment experts to work
with the Intelligence Community on a regular basis, and members
of this group will have security clearances so they can address
the most challenging biological threat problems with which the
Intelligence Community is dealing.
NCPC has also begun an effort to improve information
sharing within the Intelligence Community as well as with life
science experts inside and outside of the U.S. Government. Our
approach includes determining what types of traditional
intelligence and scientific information the Intelligence
Community needs to better answer questions posed by senior
policymakers and how to ensure this information is distributed
to all relevant parties within the Intelligence Community.
We initiated this effort in early April when we co-hosted,
really, with the National Counterterrorism Center an IC
conference that focused on community building, information
sharing and defining the Intelligence Community's roles against
the full spectrum of biological threats, natural to manmade.
The conference was well attended and included approximately
85 participants from 14 intelligence agencies, as well as
senior representatives from four combatant commands.
Participants in the conference were senior analyst, collectors
and science and technology officers.
Feedback from this conference has helped us define areas
where biological scientists and other experts from the broader
U.S. Government and outside the U.S. Government could aid in
technical evaluations. The conference also provided insight in
ways to improve our intelligence regarding biological threat
agents themselves.
In addition, we initiated an internal review of collection
efforts associated with biological threat agents. This review,
along with the engagement of the Intelligence Community through
the conference I mentioned previously, will result in
recommendations that will address any gaps in our processes.
The review will also identify ways in which we can better
support customer needs for bio-related intelligence.
Mr. Chairman, the ability of our biodefense community to
anticipate, eliminate, prepare for and, if necessary, respond
to a biological weapons attack on the United States, as you
noted, depends on improved intelligence collection analysis and
proper dissemination of that information to relevant customers.
We recognize in the Intelligence Community that numerous,
non-IC partners must be more fully engaged in these processes
in order to improve biodefense infrastructure. We are working
closely with all U.S. Government organizations involved in the
biodefense mission to ensure our biodefense customers are part
of the requirement-setting process, that they are fully aware
of the IC's capabilities and limitations and that they are
recipients of the intelligence analyses they need to perform
their part of the biodefense mission.
In this regard, in July, we will cosponsor with the
Department of Homeland Security and the National
Counterterrorism Center, a second biothreats conference that
will include all relevant USG agencies, not just Intelligence
Community agencies, to expand awareness, address common
concerns and identify ways to share information that is
mutually beneficial. If this forum is anything like the first
one, it will stimulate discussion on issues regarding the
biological information most valued and already possessed within
the U.S. Government and will identify gaps in our current
systems of collection and analysis. Our goal will be ensuring
these gaps are closed through a strategic planning and
implementation of those plans across the Federal Government.
Following this conference, in the fall, NCPC, again with
the Department of Homeland Security and the National
Counterterrorism Center, will co-host a third conference
involving representatives of the U.S. Government as well as
representatives from academia and the private sector to explore
how these sectors outside of government might help fill
information gaps.
We are already engaging leading experts in certain
designated fields who can add technical insight into current
and emerging biological threats, and we continue to seek their
counsel on how to most productively engage non-U.S. life
scientists in that larger community.
Mr. Chairman, the National Counterproliferation Center is
in the final stages of preparing a strategic
counterproliferation plan with the Intelligence Community. This
plan will, among other things, identify enhancements of the
Intelligence Community's counter-BW capabilities as a priority
goal and will stress the need for the Intelligence Community to
fully integrate and coordinate the efforts it has under way
against the BW threat.
It also acknowledges that the Intelligence Community's
success in dealing with biothreat challenges is dependent upon
having the skilled workforce needed to deal with these complex
issues. The plan will promote the recruitment, the development
and retention of the highly skilled and specialized workforce
needed to sustain success in acquiring and using high value
intelligence information against each of the WMD threats we
face, but particularly the BW target.
Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, we in the Intelligence
Community recognize that we need to continue to integrate and
focus our efforts internally, to actively seek partnerships
externally and to attract and retain skilled life scientists
into our workforce, if we are to be successful in dealing with
the challenges to our national biothreat security.
We know what we have to do in this regard, and have made a
good start in achieving these goals in all of these areas.
[The statement of Mr. Brill follows:]
FOR THE RECORD
Prepared Statement of Ambassador Ken Brill
Thursday, May 4, 2006
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and distinguished Subcommittee
members, I am pleased to appear before you today to discuss the steps
the National Counterproliferation Center (NCPC) is taking to address
some of the recommendations put forward by The Commission on the
Intelligence Capabilities of the United States regarding Weapons of
Mass Destruction (WMD) on the biological warfare (BW) topic, thereby
enhancing the ability of the Intelligence Community (IC) to meet the
threat posed by the proliferation of biological weapons and related
technologies.
Let me begin by underscoring what role NCPC plays on issues like
bio threats. Expertise in analysis and collection resides in the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Security
Agency (NSA), and other elements of the Intelligence Community. NCPC's
role is to ensure there is an integrated IC effort against key
priorities and to promote partnerships among the elements of the IC,
non-IC United States (U.S.) government (USG) agencies, and experts
outside of government. NCPC's priority-setting and integrating role is
critical, as counterproliferation requires a team effort, and nowhere
is this more true than in the area of biological threats to U.S.
national security.
Today, I will discuss efforts to strengthen the IC's life sciences
work force, the creation of a biological science advisory group that
NCPC's Senior Bio Advisor will establish and run, and our initiatives
to make more effective links between biological experts throughout
government and outside the government with the IC. In addition, I would
like to take some time to tell you about a few other initiatives NCPC
has underway to promote an integrated IC approach to the problem of
biological threat agents, increase teamwork, and fill gaps in our
knowledge about the biological threats posed from state and non-state
actors.
The Challenges Facing Bio Threat Intelligence
A major challenge for the Intelligence Community in dealing with
bio-related issues is research and development applications and
technology that are completely dual-use--i.e., legitimate research that
might (and I emphasize `might') be misused to cause harm to public
health and homeland and national security. The IC has written numerous
assessments of the potential impact of existing and emerging
technologies related to biological weapons proliferation as these
technologies are developed from or applied to the life sciences; a
major portion of the 2004 National Intelligence Estimate on worldwide
BW programs was devoted to this issue. These assessments have utilized
the talented in-house scientific expertise of our analysts and
scientists and have drawn on the advice of outside technical experts as
well.
Although some believe that we will understand the threats we face
from offensive use of biological agents if only we follow technological
advances that have the potential to be misused and track who in the
world is working in these areas, our experience indicates that this is
a strategy of looking for hay in a haystack. The key questions for the
Intelligence Community are primarily not highly technical in nature.
We must determine if a state adversary has the intent
to establish, maintain, or acquire a BW program, because a
country of concern typically will have a dual-use capability.
Whether that capability is for legitimate medical purposes,
developing defensive countermeasures, or is for offensive BW is
closely guarded, non-technical information.
Some non-state actors, such as al-Qa'ida, have
publicly stated that they have the intent to eventually have an
offensive biological capability, so the IC must constantly
monitor the plans and capabilities of these groups in order to
determine who, where, and under what circumstances they will
actually use them.
Focusing on technology alone not only does not answer these
questions, but it can lead people to speculate on nightmare scenarios
that are not grounded in reality.
Another challenge facing the IC is that biological threat agents go
beyond man-made substances produced by state programs or terrorist
groups. A global pandemic would have dramatically negative consequences
for the national security interests of the United States. While such a
pandemic would be largely dealt with by those US government agencies
concerned with domestic and international public health issues, the
Intelligence Community would be looked to for actionable medical
intelligence about the spread of pandemic diseases that would not be
available publicly or that others might cover up for one reason or
another. The IC would also be called upon to provide analysis to
support the efforts of U.S. government public health and other
agencies. Thus, while the IC would not be a primary actor in dealing
with a pandemic situation it needs to be prepared to play an important
supporting role.
Expanding Partnerships and Collaboration
NCPC is working with IC agencies to ensure the IC is prepared to
succeed in meeting the various bio threat challenges to U.S. national
security. In this regard, NCPC works to establish important new
partnerships and relationships with the life science and public health
communities. The following are some of the steps we are taking.
First, and consistent with the recommendations of the WMD
Commission's Report, NCPC has established the position of Senior
Advisor for Biological Issues. Dr. Lawrence Kerr has recently assumed
this position and is accompanying me today.
Dr. Kerr completed his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Vanderbilt
University and undertook his postdoctoral work at the Salk Institute
for Biological Studies in San Diego, California. Dr. Kerr has a wealth
of expertise pertinent to the mission of the Senior Advisor. He ran a
basic science laboratory devoted to the regulation of gene expression
as faculty at Vanderbilt School of Medicine and now Georgetown School
of Medicine. His political experience has taken him from developing
policy and staffing senior officials of the White House (within the
Office of Science and Technology Policy and most recently, as Director
for Biodefense Policy within the Homeland Security Council) to the
Congress (as a fellow on the Health subunit of the Senate Judiciary
Committee). He remains actively engaged with the life science and
public health communities writ large. His experience in fostering
policy to meet national objectives has brought him the respect of the
Federal Departments and Agencies, and individuals and groups from the
private sector and academic communities with whom he routinely lectures
at the national and international levels and works to coordinate policy
and plans.
Dr. Kerr is tasked with promoting greater collaboration among the
interagency, academic and private sector to improve intelligence
related to biological threats. As part of this effort, Dr. Kerr is
working to identify new partnerships that should be developed with
entities outside the IC and outside the U.S. Government, to strengthen
the IC's counter-BW capabilities.
An important part of Dr. Kerr's partnership building efforts will
be working with IC agencies and non-governmental experts to establish
the IC's first broadly-focused biological science advisory group. This
group will report to the DNI through the Director of NCPC, but it will
serve the IC as a whole. While the classified charter for this group is
under review, we envision a panel of nationally recognized leaders in
the life sciences, engineering, public health and medicine, veterinary
medicine, pharmaceutical experts and many other disciplines. NCPC shall
convene this group of non-government experts to work with the
Intelligence Community on a routine basis.
This advisory group will draw from the best practices of existing
IC advisory panels, which will require that the life scientists and
associated experts possess security clearances, permitting their
exposure to and understanding of our nation's current capabilities in
collection, analysis, and the science and technology brought to bear in
performing these missions. The group will complement, not duplicate,
the work of the Defense Science Board (DSB), the Intelligence Science
Board, the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity (NSABB), or
the Defense Intelligence Agency's Jefferson Project and Biochem 2020
group. The new advisory group we will look across the broad horizon of
known and emerging biological threat agents challenges for U.S.
intelligence, ranging from man-made substance and state and terrorist
programs to naturally occurring pandemics, and thereby support the
fundamental mission of the NCPC, fulfill the commitments in the
President's Homeland Security and National Security Presidential
Directives (HSPD-10/NSPD-33, ``Biodefense for the 21st Century) and
build on recommendations from the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) recent
report and the advise of renowned leaders in the field.
We envision the new bio advisory panel will include a permanent
advisory group of leading experts with access to a network of cleared
scientists who are able to tap into the scientific and technical
experts across the life sciences. We will encourage this group to
partner with the existing life science-related committees in and out of
the Federal government in order to prevent redundancy and augment on-
going projects. NCPC, with input from the IC, will ask the advisory
group to identify issue areas and cutting-edge technologies that might
pose a future threat to our security.
Enhancing Collaboration through Information Sharing
NCPC has also begun an effort to improve information sharing within
the IC as well as with life science experts inside and outside of the
USG who can extend the breadth and depth of scientific understanding
brought to bear on the issue of biological threat agents. The approach
includes determining what types of traditional intelligence and
scientifically grounded information the IC needs to better answer the
questions posed by senior policymakers and how to ensure it is
distributed to all relevant parties within the IC. We envision that
existing working groups and policy coordinating committees will be
asked to work on strategies to resolve key issues that are identified
during this process.
We initiated this effort in early April when we co-hosted with the
National Counterterrorism center (NCTC) an IC conference that focused
on community building, information sharing, and defining the
Intelligence Community's roles against the full spectrum of biological
threats, natural to intentional. The conference was well attended, with
approximately 85 participants from 14 intelligence agencies (including
senior representatives from 4 combatant commands). Participants in the
conference were senior analysts, collectors, and science and technology
officers. Each organization briefed its mission, goals, and needs.
Participants told us these briefings provided valuable insights into
the array of bio-related activities ongoing in the IC. In addition, we
conducted smaller-group discussions on specific issues, including
improving information sharing both within and outside the IC, and
defining the IC's role in covering natural disease outbreaks. Feedback
from this IC conference has helped us define areas where biological
scientists and other experts from the broader USG and outside of
government could aid in technical evaluations and has given us insight
in ways to improve our intelligence regarding biological threat agents.
In addition, we initiated an internal review of collection efforts
associated with biological threat agents. This review, along with the
engagement of the IC writ large through the aforementioned conference,
will result in recommendations that will address any gaps in our
current processes as well as identify ways in which we can better
support our IC customer's need for bio-related intelligence.
The ability of our biodefense community to anticipate, eliminate,
prepare for, and if necessary, respond to a biological weapons attack
on the United States depends on improved intelligence collection,
analysis and proper dissemination of that information to the relevant
customers. We recognize that numerous non-IC partners must be more
fully engaged in these processes for an improved seamless biodefense
infrastructure. We are partnering closely with all U.S. government
(USG) organizations involved in the biodefense mission, such as the
Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Homeland Security
(DHS), the Department of Defense, the US Department of Agriculture, and
others to make sure that all of our customers not only are part of the
requirements setting process, but that they are fully aware of our
capabilities and limitations--and are recipients of the intelligence
analyses they need in order to perform their part of the biodefense
mission.
In July we will co-sponsor, with NCTC and DHS, a second bio threats
conference to expand awareness, address common concerns and identify
ways to share information that is mutually beneficial to the
Departments while maintaining their respective mission areas. We will
discuss how to better identify, acquire, distribute, integrate, and
utilize diverse streams of information within the US government so the
threats posed by known and emerging biological agents are more
effectively identified, characterized and addressed. If this forum is
anything like the first one, it will surely stimulate discussion on
issues regarding the biological information most valued and already
possessed within the U.S. government and will identify gaps in our
current systems of collection and analysis. Our goal will be to ensure
that these gaps are closed through strategic planning and
implementation of those plans across the Federal government.
In the fall, NCPC will co-host with NCTC and DHS a third conference
involving key representatives from academia and the private sector to
explore how these sectors might help fill our information gaps. We are
already engaging leading experts in certain designated fields who can
add technical insight into current and emerging biological threats and
we are seeking their counsel on how to most productively engage non-USG
life scientists.
Building and Sustaining the Workforce Needed to Meet Bio Threat
Challenges
NCPC is in the final stages of preparing a strategic
counterproliferation plan for the IC. This plan will, inter alia,
identify enhancement of the IC's counter-BW capabilities as a priority
goal and will stress the need for the IC to fully integrate and
coordinate the efforts it has underway against the BW threat. It will
also acknowledge the IC's success in dealing with bio threat challenges
is dependent upon having the skilled workforce needed to deal with
these complex issues. The plan will promote the recruitment,
development, and retention of a highly skilled and specialized
workforce needed to sustain success in acquiring and using high value
intelligence information against each of the specific WMD threats,
including the BW target. The key initiatives will include, inter alia:
Recruitment--in partnership between the Communities, a
workforce mapping and assessment initiative will establish the
current baseline; identify any expertise shortages or gaps; and
then will work to develop an interagency process to promote
candidate sharing and make recommendations for agency
recruitment.
Career Development--an initiative to identify career
benchmarks for life science professionals across the Community;
review training and improve communications and access to
strengthen external linkages with experts; and will work to
find new ways to increase the numbers of analysts, collectors
and other life science and technology experts.
Retention--we are reviewing agency retention
strategies; communicating best practices; and working to
establish a Community Rewards Program recognizing collaborative
achievement.
And finally, partnership is the key--partnering with
the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and
other Community members to leverage the best talent and
expertise within the private sector.
Conclusion
Bio threats are among the most complex challenges facing the IC.
The biological sciences are producing new findings and innovations at a
remarkable pace. These innovations hold the promise to advance human
health, but those also have the potential to be misused by state
weapons programs or terrorists. At the same time, the possibility of
naturally occurring pandemics is increasing. We recognize that
significant challenges remain for the collection of traditional
intelligence and other kinds of information to assist in attack
warning, countermeasure development and strategic level policy-making
related to biothreats to the U.S. NCPC is working with IC agencies to
integrate the IC's work on bio threat challenges. In addition, NCPC is
leading an effort to build partnerships for the IC with non-IC U.S.
government agencies, as well as with the non-government life science
communities. Finally, NCPC is also working with the IC agencies to
ensure the IC has the workforce it needs in the future to deal
successfully with bio threat challenges. We have much to do to realize
our goals, but we have made a good start toward achieving our goals in
all these areas.
Mr. Linder. Thank you, Ambassador Brill.
Mr. Allen.
STATEMENT OF CHARLES E. ALLEN, CHIEF INTELLIGENCE OFFICER,
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Allen. Chairman Linder, Ranking Member Langevin,
Congressman Norton, thank you very much for inviting me here to
discuss a very important topic for the Department of Homeland
Security intelligence and for the rest of the Intelligence
Community.
The consequences of a high impact bioterrorist attack upon
the homeland could be catastrophic, rivaling the casualties and
the economic damage caused by the detonation of a nuclear
weapon in a major city.
Because the potential consequences of bioterrorism are so
great and the knowledge and materials for biological weapons
development are likely to become more available in the future,
the Department of Homeland Security ranks the biological threat
as among its highest concerns.
In this statement, I will first describe the bioterrorism
threat we currently face as well as the prospects for
terrorist-developed advanced biological agents. I will then
describe efforts Department of Homeland Security intelligence
is taking to make unique contributions to existing Intelligence
Community efforts to combat bioterrorism.
The threat of bioterrorism is real. We know that al-Qa'ida
since the late 1990s has sought biological weapons and
progressed to the point of constructing a biological production
facility in Qandahar, Afghanistan, before U.S. military action
in 2001 brought down the Taliban regime which had protected al-
Qa'ida. Although al-Qa'ida's BW efforts have been disrupted, we
judge its intent to pursue biological weapons continues.
In addition to al-Qa'ida, I am concerned with like-minded
extremist groups and lone wolves, both foreign and domestic,
who could develop biologic weapons. The technology and
knowledge that produced simple yet effective biological agents
is readily available in the United States and overseas.
With the increase in radicalization worldwide, it is
conceivable that some converts will have knowledge of the
biosciences or engineering and will use their skills to present
bioterrorism.
I understand the subcommittee is particularly concerned
with the impact of biotechnology on the development of novel
and engineered biological threats, those that are designed to
evade our medical countermeasures and detection systems. In
this area, we must exercise caution and not confuse the
capabilities of terrorists with state level biological warfare
programs.
There is no doubt that the knowledge and technologies today
exist to create and manipulate agents. However, the
capabilities of terrorists to embark on this path in the near
to midterm is judged to be low. Just because technology is
available does not mean terrorists can or will use it.
In general, we see terrorists in the early stages of
biological capabilities, and we do not anticipate a rapid
evolution to include sophisticated methods that will enable the
creation of new organisms or genetic modification to enhance
virulence.
That being said, we must not mistake unsophisticated
weapons for those that are ineffective. Even crude biological
preparations can cause significant health and economic damage
if well disseminated.
The Department of Homeland Security intelligence is working
closely with the Bioscience Community and our Intelligence
Community partners to make unique contributions to ongoing
counter-bioterrorism work. Our role is to analyze potential,
domestic and international biologic threats and to ensure that
the homeland perspective is represented in threat analysis and
collection.
We also augment and enhance bioterrorism-related programs
and activities that benefit the homeland mission. To this end,
my Office of Intelligence and Analysis, has established a
dedicated biothreat section in our Threat Analysis Division.
The officers in this section provide intelligence support on
bioterrorism and naturally occurring biological threats such as
influenza to our DHS components, Intelligence Community
colleagues and to our Federal, State, local, tribal and
international partners.
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis leverages 24 by 7
the technical reachback to the Department of Energy's national
laboratories, sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security
Science and Technology Directorate. We also partnered with the
Science and Technology Directorate on the first national
bioterrorism risk assessment, which connotatively evaluates 28
biothreat agents based on threat, vulnerability and
consequence.
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis last year
established a biological advisory panel of bioscience experts
from academia and industry. This panel assisted the Department
of Homeland Security with forecasting trends in biology that
could manifest as homeland threats in the next 5 years. We will
continue to work with these and other experts on the biological
threat.
The Department of Homeland Security intelligence officers
collaborate with the National Counterterrorism Center and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation at the State and local level in
providing first responders with WMD threat briefings and in
providing indicators and warning so officials in the field know
how to identify and report potential bioterrorist activities.
Before I conclude, I would like to emphasize the crucial
importance of collection in our intelligence efforts to combat
bioterrorism. As the WMD Commission last year identified, the
Intelligence Community has significant intelligence gaps with
respect to bioterrorism and biological weapons. Any effort to
enhance biointelligence must focus on targeting and collection
first.
Without current specific information, any analysis is
merely an educated guess. While integrating scientists,
physicians and other specialists into intelligence analysis has
merit, and we have such personnel in the Office of Intelligence
and analysis and obviously across the Intelligence Community,
it alone is not the solution to biointelligence. We simply must
have more collection.
Thank you again for inviting me here today. You have my
commitment that the Department of Homeland Security
intelligence will continue to partner with our Science and
Technology Directorate, the Department of Homeland Security
components and the Intelligence Community at large to target,
collect and analyze information on foreign and domestic
biological threats.
[The statement of Mr. Allen follows:]
Prepared Statement of Charles E. Allen
Thursday, May 4, 2006
Introduction
Chairman Linder, Ranking Member Langevin, Members of the
Subcommittee: Thank you for inviting me here today to discuss a very
important topic for the DHS Intelligence Enterprise and for the rest of
our Intelligence Community.
The consequences of a high-impact bioterrorist attack upon the
Homeland could be catastrophic, rivaling the casualties and economic
damage caused by the detonation of a nuclear device in a major city.
Because the potential consequences of bioterrorism are so great, and
the knowledge and materials for biological weapons (BW) development are
likely to become more available in the future, the Department of
Homeland Security ranks the BW threat among its highest concerns.
In this statement, I will first describe the BW terrorist threat we
currently face as well as the prospects for terrorist-developed
advanced BW, followed by a brief discussion of the importance of
collection to BW intelligence. I also will describe efforts DHS
Intelligence is taking with the Intelligence Community to combat
bioterrorism.
Defining the Bioterrorist Threat
We know that al-Qa'ida in the late 1990s began developing a
biological weapons program and constructed a ``low-tech'' facility in
Qandahar, Afghanistan, for BW production before US military forces
disrupted this activity. Even though subsequent US intelligence and
military operations in the region have further damaged al-Qa'ida's
leadership and operational capabilities, we believe al-Qa'ida's intent
to develop biological weapons likely continues.
We know that domestic actors involved in acts of bioterrorism over
the past 20 years have exhibited increasingly lethal objectives. A
review of more than 120 cases of domestic bioterrorism and biocrimes
reveals that more than two-thirds of these perpetrators were motivated
by political or ideological goals--the same motivations that drive many
terrorists. Although the object of these attacks were individuals or
small groups, extremist ideology has been the genesis for mass casualty
terrorism and the potential exists for this type of small-scale actor
to scale-up their efforts and pose a more significant problem.
Perhaps the most difficult target--and potentially the most
significant and likely to succeed on some scale--is the ``lone wolf.''
An individual with training in the biosciences and operating alone
could use small-scale production to yield an effective biological
weapon. One does not need a significant infrastructure or multiple
personnel to produce an effective biological weapon and this activity
could go on undetected in the Homeland. We are especially concerned
that small, loosely affiliated cells or individuals within the United
States could conduct biological attacks. Such groups or individuals may
not be affiliated with al-Qa'ida but merely subscribe to its ideology,
similar to the small cell that conducted the July 2005 suicide bombings
in London.
I understand that the Subcommittee is particularly concerned with
the impact of biotechnology on development of novel and engineered
biological threats--those designed to evade our medical countermeasures
or detection systems. In this area we must exercise caution and not
confuse the capabilities of bioterrorists with state-level BW programs.
There is no doubt that the knowledge and technologies today exist to
create and manipulate bio-threat agents; however, the capability of
terrorists to embark on this path in the near--to mid-term is judged to
be low. Just because the technology is available does not mean
terrorists can or will use it.
It is vital that we keep in mind that all the equipment and
knowledge to create highly-effective biological weapons is openly
available today and can be remarkably low-technology. In general,
terrorist capabilities in the area of bioterrorism are crude and
relatively unsophisticated, and we do not see any indication of a rapid
evolution of capability.\1\ It is, therefore, unclear how advancements
in high-end biotechnology will impact the future threat of
bioterrorism, if at all. All it would take, however, for advanced BW
development is one skilled scientist and modest equipment--an activity
we are unlikely to detect in advance.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ It is important that we do not confuse sophistication with
effectiveness. Even a crude biological weapon can cause significant
casualties and economic impacts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
With respect to the evolution of bioterrorism, we would expect to
see use of traditional biological agents (anthrax, plague, tularemia,
and others) before the appearance of advanced BW agents. Therefore, we
would consider the use of traditional biological weapons more
frequently or on a large scale to be a trigger that may indicate
movement towards more advanced biological weapons.
For all we know about the bioterrorist threat today, I am more
concerned with what we do not know. As the Commission on the
Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of
Mass Destruction (WMD) last year identified, there are significant gaps
and obstacles to our current knowledge of BW capabilities and even more
so with respect to specific plans, methods, and targets.
Developing Bio-Intelligence
Targeting and Collection are Critical Components
The Intelligence Community has significant intelligence gaps with
respect to bioterrorism and biological weapons and any effort to
enhance bio-intelligence must focus on targeting and collection first.
Without current, specific information, any analysis is merely an
educated guess. Human intelligence is absolutely essential for
identifying plans, intentions, and targets of bioterrorists
domestically and overseas. Analysis of how the Intelligence Community
handled the former Soviet Union's BW program, the Iraqi BW program, and
al-Qa'ida's BW efforts clearly demonstrate that human source reporting
is vital; signals, imagery, and measurement and signatures intelligence
can only take one so far--plans and intentions are revealed through
insider information.
While integrating scientists, physicians, and other specialists
into intelligence analysis has merit--and we have such personnel in the
Office of Intelligence and Analysis and across the Intelligence
Community--it alone is not the solution to bio-intelligence. Our
difficulties do not come from analyzing scientific information, but in
obtaining credible, relevant information to analyze. To this end, the
IC should look to more than just relying on scientific and technical
specialists only for analysis, it should also partner with science and
academia to contribute to the targeting and collection of information
on the bioterrorist threat. This does not mean training physicians as
spies, but there is a great amount of overt, public, or semi-public
information that medical and scientific personnel come across that is
of value to us.
Targeting: Materials or People?
Past targeting of BW activity has focused on dual-use equipment.
This was somewhat possible when tracking large-scale state BW efforts,
but it will be increasingly difficult to track, forecast, and control
such materials and knowledge, especially on the smaller scale of
bioterrorism. The equipment that terrorists would need has a multitude
of legitimate uses as that can be found in a variety of legitimate
entities worldwide. While tracking potential bioterrorism materials
will remain important, we may be better off focusing primarily on
tracking persons with the motivation, intent, and capability to become
bioterrorists.
We need to focus our intelligence efforts on developing better
intelligence about the plans and intentions of those who would carry
out an attack. Toward this end, my Office of Intelligence and Analysis
is managing an effort to fuse all-source intelligence, including open
source, to identify individuals with technical training and credentials
who interact with foreign persons of concern. The interaction of these
individuals can give early indications of intent to develop biological
weapons and other WMD for use against the Homeland. These indications,
when identified, serve to focus collection and monitoring through
intelligence means in order to characterize and assess potential
developing threats.
There are specific legitimate entities which could be major sources
of information about individuals or groups who may be seeking to
develop expertise in new technologies for malicious purposes, yet there
is no effective process for collecting and analyzing this information.
DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis is investigating how we may
partner with these entities to keep informed on developments and
suspicious activity.
Bioterrorism Intelligence within DHS Intelligence
Within the Office of Intelligence and Analysis' Threat Analysis
Division, we have established a dedicated section for Bio-Threats with
the mission to conduct all-source intelligence analysis on both
bioterrorism and naturally-occurring biological threats, such as avian
influenza. This section also seeks to identify new bio-threat
information through programs with US Government partners, and it
performs outreach and liaison with DHS components, Intelligence
Community partners, non-Title 50 agencies, and State and local
partners.
Our Bio-Threat Section is staffed with four officers--two of whom
are PhD-level experts--and we have two vacancies for which we are
recruiting. In addition to our in-house staff, we have a reachback
capability to subject-matter experts at several Department of Energy
National Laboratories. Although most bioterrorism issues are dealt with
in-house, it is essential that we have 24/7 reachback for technical
information such as agent production methods, dissemination device
efficiency, and agent virulence data that we then apply to our analyses
and finished intelligence products.
Collaboration
DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis does not conduct its
analysis and production alone; we are well-integrated with the key BW
analysis and operational elements of each Intelligence Community member
as well as with the science and technology centers within the Federal
government. We have no stronger partner in the bioterrorism field than
the National Counterterrorism Center's (NCTC) Chemical, Biological,
Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) Terrorism Division. On an almost daily
basis, we confer with our NCTC colleagues on BW issues as well as other
WMD topics. We also have close relationships with the Federal Bureau of
Investigation's (FBI) WMD Countermeasure Unit, the Central Intelligence
Agency's (CIA) Counterterrorist Center (CTC) and its Center for Weapons
Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC), and the
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
In addition, we work closely with the DHS National Biodefense
Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC). The NBACC has provided us
with technical information on bio-threats and, in return, we supply the
NBACC with relevant intelligence reports and assessments relating to
biological weapons threats. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis
last year partnered with the NBACC to produce the first Bioterrorism
Risk Assessment under Homeland Security Presidential Directive 10
(Biodefense for the 21st Century).
Beyond the Federal government, our Bio-Threat Section has made in-
roads to academia and industry. In 2005 we sponsored two well-received
workshops to explore current issues in bioterrorism by hosting national
experts from outside government. There were:
``Emerging Technologies: Assessing the Future
Bioterror Threat'' brought together a panel of leading
biotechnology and biological weapons experts to discuss their
projections for the bioterror threat to the United States over
the next five years. This panel was created as part of a
broader DHS effort to establish relationships with key experts
in biological fields.
``Terrorism and Chemical, Biological, and Radiological (CBR)
Weapons: Outlook, Intent, and Constraints'' involved terrorism
experts discussing the factors that shape terrorist interest
in, and potential use of CBR agents. Key topics discussed
include, how recent changes in the nature of Islamic terrorism
might affect terrorists' intent to acquire or use CBR agents,
how terrorists would measure ``success'' for CBR agent use, and
the psychological, social, and operational factors that might
affect terrorists' attitudes towards CBR agents.
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis also is developing
relationships with our close allies in Australia, Canada, and the
United Kingdom. For the past two years, we have shared WMD terrorism
information and technical studies with the United Kingdom, Canada, and
Australia. This year we will provide the intelligence and threat scene
setter for the Consequence Management Group--a US, United Kingdom,
Canada, and Australia working group that shares WMD preparedness and
response best practices and policies based on the worldwide WMD threat.
We also engage in bilateral relationships to discuss bioterrorist
threats. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis recently sent an
officer to engage the Russian Government on bioterrorism information
sharing, law enforcement cooperation, and a joint US-Russia
bioterrorism exercise. We will continue to form international
partnerships to tackle the threat of bioterrorism as it is impossible
for one agency or one government to cover adequately such a diverse and
rapidly advancing field.
Examples of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis' Work in the
Area of Bioterrorism
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis has been productive in its
bioterrorism analysis and program development. Although some of our
efforts are classified and cannot be discussed in this forum, we have
been engaged in a number of endeavors, such as those listed below:
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis founded and
chairs the Bio-Threat Intelligence Support Working Group
(BTISWG) in partnership with the NBACC in order to provide
Intelligence Community-wide intelligence expertise on BW
issues. The BTISWG is chaired by the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis and vice-chaired by NCTC and includes 12 senior BW
officers from CIA, DIA, FBI, the National Security Agency
(NSA), and other Intelligence Community members.
Through the BTISWG, the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis contributed intelligence information to the first
Bioterrorism Risk Assessment called for by HSPD-10. This risk
assessment serves as the first quantitative, comprehensive
analysis of threat, vulnerability, and consequences of each of
28 bio-threat agents..
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis, in
partnership with NCTC and FBI, has conducted dozens of WMD
terrorism threat briefings to state and local officials in
order to provide them with awareness of the threat and to
provide indicators and warning information so they may
appropriately report any suspicious events.
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis is co-
sponsoring with the National Counterproliferation Center, the
NBACC, and the Department of Health and Human Services a Bio-
Threat Information Sharing Conference series to match US
Government and non-US Government threat-related information to
customers in Intelligence Community. We already have had an
Intelligence Community-only meeting and plan to have a federal
government-wide meeting this summer with similar events for the
private sector and state governments in the fall.
We are the integrator and supplier of threat and
intelligence information to the National Biosurveillance
Group--an interagency body that analyzes environmental and
health data to provide early warning of a natural or deliberate
biological event.
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis supports
development of BioShield Material Threat Assessments and
Determinations by ensuring that the baseline threat information
and adversary capabilities are accurate.
Conclusion
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis will continue to partner
with DHS' Science and Technology Directorate and our DHS components to
focus strongly on targeting, collecting, and analyzing information on
foreign and domestic bioterrorist threats. To maintain close contact
with the scientific community, we will continue our workshop series
with academia and industry. We also plan to have a satellite Office of
Intelligence and Analysis office within NBACC at the Interagency
Biodefense Campus at Fort Detrick to ensure that we have direct access
to what will be the hub of US biodefense work. My Office also is
reviewing several initiatives to enable the DHS intelligence enterprise
to function more cohesively against the bioterrorist and WMD threat and
to leverage our state and federal partners to develop tactical
intelligence while maintaining our strategic support to the science and
technology communities.
Mr. Linder. Thank you, Mr. Allen.
Mr. Pease.
STATEMENT OF BRUCE PEASE, DIRECTOR, WEAPONS INTELLIGENCE,
NONPROLIFERATION AND ARMS CONTROL, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Mr. Pease. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Langevin,
Congresswoman Norton. Good afternoon.
Let me start by endorsing the comments you just heard by
Mr. Allen and Ambassador Brill. I will amplify this a bit and
try to summarize, but focusing on the role that bioscience
plays in our biological warfare analytic efforts.
Let me start by emphasizing that outreach is an effort we
take very, very seriously and have focused considerable time
and energy to strengthen over the past few years. I realize
that probably few of the outside experts who have spoken to you
fully understand our capabilities, our intelligence
capabilities, the nature and scope of our job, or the extent of
our efforts to continually improve our expertise.
Let me begin by explaining why we value their expertise so
highly. We have a broad mission in WINPAC, the office that I
direct at CIA, to do all we can to protect America from the
strategic threat of foreign weapons that you have already
mentioned.
We are concerned about the states that may develop or
enhance their biological warfare capabilities, and we are
concerned about the nexus between biological warfare and
terrorism. The rapid emergence of new technologies is something
that we are very seized with and we do try to keep our eye on
the cutting edge of biological science that could be applied to
biological warfare.
Clearly the scientific expertise that we can talk to and
has made itself very available to us, experts across America
are very willing to help us, offer us material, insights, and
approaches that jump-start some of our thinking, and help,
frankly, spur our thinking in areas that are very beneficial.
We also are trying hard to bring experts into our own
workforce and our recruiting is very much aimed at that. We
have in our workforce world class biological warfare experts,
some at the doctoral level, some the at the master's level,
some at the bachelor's level, that are trained intelligence
professionals applying their skills to biological warfare.
But this expertise together, attached to the biological and
biotechnological experts that we can talk to from the outside,
help us focus on all aspects of the development of the
biological warfare threat. No matter how many people we put
together in a room, there is an extra person who is willing to
offer their services and worth hearing from. We try to do that.
Having said that, I will repeat, I think, something that
you heard from both Mr. Allen and Ambassador Brill, which is
this is not the hard part of the biological warfare threat and
keeping ahead of the biological warfare threat, especially when
you are talking about that threat in the hands of terrorists.
The hard part is getting the information on where that threat
is actually being developed, what they are developing, how they
are doing it, and what they intend to do with it.
That is one of the hardest collection intelligence targets
that there is in the world. I have in my career spanned many
intelligence collection targets and intelligence priorities.
This is the hardest of the hard. The work that needs to be done
there, as Mr. Allen says, needs to be both relentless and
creative. Outside experts can help us on both the collection
front and the analytic front.
Let me stop it there and turn it over to my colleague, Dr.
MacDougall.
[The statement of Mr. Pease follows:]
Preapred Statement of Bruce Pease
Thursday, May 4, 2006
Chairman Linder, Ranking Member Langevin, Members of the
Subcommittee: Good afternoon (morning). Thank you for the opportunity
to speak to you today about issues we consider critical to our ability
to combat the threat posed by biological weapons. Specifically, I would
like to address the role that bioscience plays in our biological
warfare (BW) analytic efforts, and describe for you how we have reached
out to biological experts and resources beyond and Intelligence
Community.
I should emphasize that outreach is an effort we take very
seriously and have focused considerable time and energy to strengthen
over the past few years. I also realize that probably few of the
outside experts who have spoken to you fully understand our
capabilities, the nature and scope of our job, or the extent of our
efforts to continually improve our technical expertise.
Let me begin by explaining why we value biological expertise so
highly.
We have a broad mission to do all we can to protect America from
the strategic threat of foreign weapons, including biological weapons.
We are concerned about States that may continue to develop or enhance
their biological warfare capabilities, and we have assigned a high
priority to looking for a possible nexus between biological warfare and
terrorism.
The rapid emergence and spread of new technologies--
most of which have legitimate applications in biology and
medicine--may accelerate the rate of BW agent development; we
worry about the possibility that this will lead to future
biothreats that may be even harder to detect and thwart.
Clearly scientific expertise must go hand-in-hand with analytical
expertise in assessing current and future biological warfare threats.
For example, to analyze the threat posed by foreign offensive programs,
we must have the technical know-how to evaluate all aspects of the BW
cycle--from research and development through agent production,
characterization, formulation, weaponization, testing, and
dissemination.
Strong bioscience skills are needed to understand,
among other things, the mechanism by which a given biological
agent causes disease, how genetically altering an agent might
change its structure or function, the feasibility of combining
different in a single weapon, possible scenarios for using
specific BW agents, the behavior of various agents under
adverse environmental conditions, delivery options, routes of
exposure, prevention and treatment options, and the clinical
effects in exposed victims.
The information we receive from our collectors, more often than
not, is not highly technical. However, we often are faced with
technical, BW-related questions, and for those we rely on in-house
expertise as well as outside bioscience experts.
How exactly do we do this?
We have implemented a two-pronged strategy to ensure that we
develop and maintain a critical core of bioscience expertise.
1. The first part of our strategy is the expansion and
strengthening of our analytic workforce by recruiting and
hiring the best and the brightest candidates with strong
technical credentials, and providing them with advanced
technical training on BW-specific topics.
Over the past several years, we have more than
doubled our number of BW analysts. 94 percent of our
total BW and CW analysts have degrees in relevant
technical fields such as Biology, Microbiology,
Biochemistry, Pharmacology, Epidemiology, Biomedical
Engineering, Chemistry, and Chemical Engineering. 57
percent hold Master's or Ph.D.-level degrees.
Not only has this increased our depth on
substantive BW issues, it has created numerous
opportunities for analysts to go off-line periodically
for technical training and to attend scientific
meetings and exchanges.
We also encourage and pay for analysts to
pursue advanced technical degrees.
2. Secondly, we have institutionalized outreach to scientific
experts, including some of the highest caliber researchers in
the United States. We have done this through senior scientific
advisory groups, partnerships with world-class outside experts,
bioliterature workshops on cutting-edge research, IC-sponsored
conferences on pressing technical issues, formal technical
alliances with commercial and industry partners, national and
international scientific meetings, and ad hoc consultations
with a wide range of technical exports. Let me give you a few
examples.
Under the auspices of the National
Intelligence Council, the Science and Technology Expert
Partnership (know as STEP) as established to ensure
that scientific and technical analysis in the
intelligence community reflects the considered judgment
of leading US experts. A primary mission was to find
highly qualified outside experts to help intelligence
analysts reach judgments in specific areas--which our
analysts identify. In 2005, the STEP organized 11 two
and three day conferences on topics related to BW. Top
researchers spoke to our analysts about subjects such
as Microbial Engineering and Synthesis, Integrated
Global Disease Surveillance, Bio-Enable Nanomaterials,
DNA Sequencing and Polymerase Chain Reaction Analysis,
and the Applications of Biotechnology Advancements.
Over the past few years, we sponsored two
highly technical conferences with invited academic,
industry, and government experts on Aflatoxins, and
Orthopoxviruses. We tailored these conferences so that
leading US bioscientists could address very specific
BW-related questions from our analysts, and share their
insights on some complex and complicated issues.
We want our analysts to stay current in
relevant areas of science. One way we do this is
through quarterly bioliterature reviews--sponsored by
the IC's Intelligence Technology Innovation Center--at
which leading bio-researchers present state-of-the-art
briefings in areas of interest to our analysts.
Speakers in the past have addressed topics such as
aerosol technologies, host-pathogen relationships, and
synthetic biology.
In addition to these more formal mechanisms,
we have significantly expanded our outreach to US
biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, and to
academia to develop an informal cadre of expertise we
can consult on an as-needed basis. Our goal is to
increase and strengthen such relationships to help us
assess and respond to complex technical issues.
You have heard from previous speakers about
the value of initiatives such a BioChem 20/20, so I'll
only say that we strongly support and are helping to
guide this effort. This kind of forward-leaning
approach-driven by some of the best minds in our
bioscience community--is essential in helping us
prevent future technology surprise.
Along these lines, the Intelligence Science
Board--Chartered in 2002 to advise senior intelligence
leaders on emerging science and technology issues of
importance to the Community--has been invaluable in
creating linkages between intelligence and expert S&T
communities outside the government, including
bioscientists.
Let me say a few words about our fight against BW and bioterrorism.
Our biological warfare analysts face some unique and formidable
challenges. First of all, there are few, if any, clear indicators of
biological weapons development, BW research and legitimate bioscience
look the same and require much of the same equipment, expertise, and
infrastructure. It is difficult and rare to find the ``smoking gun.''
You can think of BW analysis as a 1,000 piece puzzle.
Each bit of information is a piece of the puzzle, but alone,
these pieces probably do not reveal much. Understanding the
science of BW is a critical part of what we do, but still, it
is only a piece of the puzzle.
Our analysis goes beyond the bioscience to
consider other factors that may shed light on suspected
BW activities. In the case of a State BW program, we
consider factors such as motivation and intent,
regional security, military and industrial
infrastructures, cultural and religious issues,
leadership, and political stability, to name a few.
We spend significant effort working hand-in-
hand with collectors to identify approaches for
obtaining high-value information on BW programs--which
typically is among a country's most tightly is among a
country's most tightly-held secrets.
Our goal, and that of others here today, is to obtain better
information fill the critical knowledge gaps about biological threats
worldwide. We have taken a number of specific steps toward that end,
and will continue to look for outside experts may help us further our
understanding of the BW threat.
In closing, I would like to say we fully support the efforts of
Ambassador Brill and the NCPC to strengthen our work force and create
more effective links to outside expertise. We look forward to working
closely with the new biological science advisory board in the future.
I thank the Subcommittee for its interest and assistance.
Mr. Linder. Thank you, Mr. Pease.
Dr. MacDougall.
STATEMENT OF DR. ALAN MacDOUGALL, CHIEF, COUNTERPROLIFERATION
SUPPORT OFFICE, DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Mr. MacDougall. Thank you, Chairman Linder, Ranking Member
Langevin and Congresswoman Norton. Thank you for the
opportunity to speak with you today on this very important
issue. I will be very brief and summarize my statement on one
of the activities that DIA has ongoing designed to help
strengthen our outreach to the scientific community to support
our analysts who are responsible for understanding the
biological weapons threats for the U.S. military.
First, let me say, as was so well emphasized by my
colleagues here, an assessment of the foreign biological
warfare threat very clearly requires the biological sciences
and technical expertise as a core discipline of our
intelligence activities. Our goal and approach is quite similar
to our sister agencies in building internal expertise through
the recruitment of analysts with the technical degrees in the
biological sciences and ensuring that they have available to
them the means to sustain the outreach to the scientific
community.
As mentioned earlier, there are many interagency programs
and activities that outreach to the scientific community,
including DIA, a program called BioChem 20/20. We believe that
the establishment of the National Counterproliferation Center
will not only further these ongoing efforts in the Community to
build upon them with an eye toward greater integration, the
sharing and leveraging of expertise across the board, thereby
enabling our defense and homeland communities to better prepare
and deal with the biological threat.
Let me very briefly describe and review the program. DIA
established the ChemBio 20/20 program in the late 1990s as a
core activity in our Directorate for Analysis. It engages a
group of leading scientists from across academia, industry and
the government. Its purpose has been to support Defense and
Intelligence Communities by looking at and anticipating a
potential impact of advancing technologies on the biological
and chemical warfare fronts. It engages analysts, scientists,
technical personnel from across the Community, in the
Department of Homeland Security, EPA, Department of Agriculture
and many others.
A key element of that program has been the establishment of
a committee of 20 leading experts in the scientific and
technical fields from biology, microbiology, engineering and
the like. This experts committee has been given secret level
clearances and asked to work very closely with our analysts,
now to help us in our threat assessments, including looking at
technologies and processes, in particular, that may impact our
threat assessments.
A number of studies have been completed by this program,
with an emphasis on the potential threat technologies looking
out over the next decade. Since 1999, we have published over 30
of these papers on several topical areas.
These publications are the result of this collaboration
with our analysts, the Intelligence Community and government
counterparts and the external experts. Within the Department of
Defense, we are particularly interested in understanding how
foreign offensive biological warfare programs may exploit
emerging technologies and concepts in their research and
development programs, their attempts to weaponize agents and
their means of delivering or disseminating them.
We share these assessments with collectors across the
Community to further enable them to identify foreign efforts to
take advantage of emerging scientific and technical
development. All of these papers are classified and designed to
alert the policymaker on possible trends and developments and
to support the acquisition community. We widely distribute
them, including to key allies.
On that I would like to summarize.
[The statement of Mr. MacDougall follows:]
For the Record
Prepared Statement of Alan MacDougall
Thursday, May 4, 2006
INTRODUCTION
Thank you Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman and members of the
Committee for inviting me today. I would like to briefly address the
role of bioscientists in our intelligence processes and, in particular,
the BioChem 20/20 initiative and other Agency outreach efforts to the
bioscience community designed to help us accomplish our mission.
Many longstanding challenges exist today, such as integrating the
science and intelligence communities on biological warfare (BW) issues,
increasing communication between the intelligence and the life science
and chemical communities, and improving the interactions between
technical experts and intelligence analysts in defining and assessing
the current and future threat. US Intelligence faces the continuing
task of rapidly identifying, prioritizing, and addressing the wide
variety of technical knowledge gaps facing BW analysts. Emerging
threats such as avian influenza and the potential for biotechnology
surprise or genetic engineering of BW agents pose significant
additional challenges for intelligence analysis and collection.
Based on the WMD COMMISSION report's recommendations, the DNI
proposed to take several specific measures aimed at better
collaboration between the intelligence and biological science
communities. DIA has focused its attention on the BW threat and has
been engaged with a group of leading life scientists academia, industry
and government in an endeavor referred to as BioChem 20/20.
BACKGROUND
By way of background, on 25 November 1998, Defense Intelligence
Agency established BioChem 20/20 as an ad element within DIA's
Counterproliferation Support Office, the leading analytic element in
the Directorate for Analysis. The mission of BioChem 20/20 is to lead
and focus the Defense Intelligence Community's assessments to
anticipate the impact of advancing technologies on the biological-
chemical warfare threat. BioChem 20/20 focuses on evaluating new
technologies that nation-states or terrorists could exploit to present
an array of potential threats to harm humans, plants, animals or
materiel.
BioChem 20/20 initiative consists of A Committee of Experts (ACE)
of more than 20 leading scientific and technical (S&T) experts and a
select team of DIA and CIA biological warfare analysts. These
scientific experts work closely within the BioChem 20/20 in assessing
cutting-edge technologies that could be used to produce unique and
deadly agents, write papers and assessment on technology and bioscience
developments as well as lead and participate in discussions on these
topics with our analysts.
The ACE members on BioChem 20/20 serve as experts identifying
critical technologies and processes that are not usually considered as
part of the emerging threat. Studies generated by BioChem 20/20
emphasize potential threat technologies looking out over the next
decade and not previously available or understood by US Intelligence.
BioChem 20/20's composition consists of scientific and technical
personnel from US Intelligence and government entities such as
Department of Homeland Security, Environmental Protection Agency,
Department of Agriculture, United States Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Disease, National Institute of Health, Chemical
and Biological Center, Lawrence and Los Alamos National Laboratories,
National Science and Technology Council, and the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency.
Since 1999, the BioChem 20/20 group has published over 30 papers in
categories including: emerging infectious diseases and technologies;
delivery mechanisms (conventional and innovative); novel agents;
scenarios and proliferation of BW related items. These publications are
the result of collaboration among our chemical and biological analysts
and the ACE, and they attempt to identify and characterize dual-use
technologies and concepts that could enable an adversary to develop
unexpectedly effective new CBW agents. These analysts and the ACE
assess the potential for foreign offensive programs to exploit the
identified technologies and concepts, including developing,
weaponizing, delivering, and disseminating biological and chemical
warfare agents. We share these assessments with the collection
community to enable them to identify foreign efforts to take advantage
of emerging scientific and technological capabilities. BioChem 20/20
papers are classified and designed to alert policymakers and the
research and development and acquisition communities to possible trends
and developments in biological and chemical warfare. The papers are
widely distributed to include allied countries.
The ACE members on the BioChem 20/20 are compensated only for their
travel, meals, accommodations, and related expenses while participating
in the quarterly BioChem 20/20 executive meetings as well as being
available for consultation and support year round. The initial BioChem
20/20 meeting was held on the 16 December 1998 at the DIAC. Our last
meeting was held at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida on and 17 and 18
January 2006. While ACE members currently hold a secret collateral or
higher clearance, we are in the process of upgrading all ACE members to
carry Top Secret clearances.
BioChem 20/20 was requested to help organize and participate in a
workshop sponsored by the National Academies' National Research Council
addressing the impact of biotechnology on the future of bioterrorism.
BioChem 20/20 drafted the futures section of the 2003 BW NIE and
produced an Emerging Technology Capstone Threat assessment.
BioChem 20/20 was specifically called out in the WMD Commission
report as a valuable US Intelligence program.
The Jefferson Program, another DIA initiative, was established to
mitigate technological surprise in the area of bioweapons, toxins,
advanced biochemicals, and related activities resulting from emerging
developments in offensive chemical and biological warfare programs.
This program evaluates and characterizes agents, technologies, and
foreign infrastructure. In addition, an expert forum meets periodically
to discuss future threats. The Jefferson Program maintains an online
unclassified repository containing CBW related information that is
shared throughout US Intelligence. All tasks under the Jefferson
Program have an intelligence basis and are intended to address analytic
intelligence shortfalls. The key focus areas are:
Chemical and Biological Agents: The potential of foreign
agents and weapons is assessed through analysis of known or suspected
infectious organisms, toxins, or advanced biochemical agents. The
distribution of known BW pathogens is assessed to assist in
differentiating naturally occurring outbreaks from accidental releases
a state program or intentional use such as in a bioterrorism event. An
Avian influenza study will provide a baseline of scientific information
which analysts will be able to identify gaps, drive collection
requirements and better assess threats.
Technologies: The capabilities of foreign countries to
convert existing conventional weapons or dual-use devices for CBW use
and potential advances in CBW agent delivery are evaluated. These
assessments enable analysts to obtain a reliable and secure technical
evaluation of foreign material. Current activities include BW analyst
training and scientific seminars taught by leading scientists outside
US Intelligence and visits to biotechnology-related facilities.
Infrastructure: The biotechnological production potential
of select foreign countries with known, suspected, or potential
offensive BW programs is characterized.
Biological and Chemical Warfare Online Repository and
Technical Holdings System (BACWORTH 2): A searchable online database
containing agent information and full text scientific and technical
documents pertaining to CBW related materials is maintained by DIA and
shared throughout US Intelligence, Department of Defense, Defense
Threat Reduction Agency, Military Commands, Department of Health and
Human Services, and the Department of Homeland Security.
As part of core knowledge and threat assessment, we have
initiated several efforts to help close intelligence gaps including:
Augmenting select DIA HUMINT field operating elements with
analytic personnel who are Bio Science subject matter experts that can
guide and focus collection activities against the highest priority BW
targets, improve source vetting, and develop new leads and sources
better HUMINT targeting;
Establishing a DIA HUMINT WMD/Counterproliferation Issue
Management division to oversee HUMINT collection issue related to the
CBW functional are and to further analyst-collector integration, as
well as CIA/DIA coordination;
Assigning DIA HUMINT targeteers to select DI analytic
elements as well as DIA field activities to enhance collection against
CBW target sets;
Promoting greater collaboration between analyst and
collector; and among analysts, law enforcement, and scientific experts
in academia, industry, and the US Government;
Collaborating with the National HUMINT Collection
Requirements Tasking Center, US intelligence experts and scientific
experts in academia and industry to develop technical collection
support guides on avian influenza and other bio-threats;
Expanding liaison relationships with our close allies;
Establishing liaison relationships with friendly countries
that are not currently engaged on a scientific and technical level;
Developing more forward-looking analyses to understand
scientific trends that may be exploited by adversaries to develop BW
and to position collectors ahead of the problem;
Defining the relationship between US Intelligence (IC),
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) to help create and maintain a national technical BW
database;
Improving capabilities to collect and analyze global
medical intelligence by engaging with scientific experts in academia
and industry to acquire data on natural distribution of known BW
agents, characterize bio-threats risk distribution, database
information on foreign medical and veterinary pharmaceutical
capabilities, model foreign nations' medical response capabilities, and
provide in-depth technical guides to assist in intelligence collection
against bio-threats.
Considering the future, DIA will need to:
Consider how best to partner with other entities to
directly serve customers for BW intelligence, including information on
research, development, and acquisition elements outside of OSD and the
combatant commands.
Exploit the long-term collection opportunities with
greatest potential to provide insight regarding foreign BW capabilities
and intentions
CONCLUSION
The Defense Intelligence Agency's BioChem 20/20 project and similar
initiatives are helping to provide US Intelligence with a cleared panel
of external technical experts in the life sciences and associated
fields to assist our analysts and collectors to more fully understand
indications of emerging biological threats. BioChem 20120 is probably
the Intelligence Community's most effective initiative for
collaboration between analysts and external world-class experts.
Building on the BioChem mission 20/20's, we believe, can further
enable US Intelligence whether that be for a greater level of in-depth
external experts review of our products, development of methodologies
and assessments, support to ``red teaming'' or seeking creative
approaches to helping us discover advances in the biological and
chemical sciences that may facilitate foreign/hostile offensive CBW
programs.
Ultimately, as a result of close and sustained interaction with the
bioscience and technical communities through programs like BioChem
20120, US Intelligence can better address underlying challenges facing
its counter CBW mission.
I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Linder. Thank you, Dr. MacDougall.
Ambassador Brill, does your agency determine or make any
judgments as to what is the largest threat to us? Nuclear,
biological, chemical?
Mr. Brill. Let me say that the National
Counterproliferation Center does not do analysis, but I think
it is fair to say that as we look at the WMD challenges facing
this country, I would say the first greatest threat of course
is in any WMD in the hands of a terrorist, whether it is nuke
or bio, each of which would have a greater impact than a
chemical, probably.
Beyond that, I think it is fair to say that we are
particularly focused on nuclear threats to the United States,
in state programs and biological threats to the United States
and state programs.
Mr. Linder. But you are dealing with the Russians and their
former programs?
Mr. Brill. I think it is fair to say that the Intelligence
Community has, and I would defer to my colleagues to my left,
but the Intelligence Community has a very broad interest in
people who are engaged in those kinds of activities.
Mr. Linder. Is there any agent in the biology area that is
not dual purpose, or able to be used both for good and for ill?
Mr. Brill. Well, part of the issue, and I will encourage my
colleagues to jump in as well, it is not so much agents but it
is processes, producing things that are inherently dual use and
then what comes out of that process can be tweaked. But the
process itself is inherently dual use. But I would encourage my
colleagues to elaborate on the point.
Mr. Pease. I think Ambassador Brill had it right. The dual
use comes from the question of whether the people that we are
looking at, the potential foes, are looking for a cure for a
pathogen or looking to spread the pathogen.
Mr. Linder. To do that you would have to have human
intelligence?
Mr. Pease. Human intelligence is irreplaceable in that
arena. It is certainly not the panacea.
Mr. Linder. If you are seeking HUMINT in the biosciences,
do you have to have biological and technical expertise to
recognize it?
Mr. Pease. I will answer that as best I can in the
unclassified arena. Forgive me if I get too cryptic here.
Technical expertise helps. If you have to choose between the
two, to choose somebody who can speak to somebody in their own
language. In their own language may include their own technical
language. That is a pretty precious skill to come by. You will
never get enough of that.
We will never be able to look under every rock we like for
that HUMINT approach, but it is the one that is most likely to
yield the kind of intelligence that is actionable.
Mr. Linder. Mr. Allen, we have had Secretary Chertoff
before us saying that the greatest catastrophic risks in this
country are nuclear and biological. The only way to intercept
that is to have intelligence to prevent it from doing damage.
We spent $108 million in Homeland Security on airlines.
What percentage of security is spent on op intelligence?
Mr. Allen. Out of the entire Homeland Security budget on
intelligence, my budget of course is classified. But it is a
very small amount of the entire open budget of Homeland
Security.
Mr. Linder. It may be classified to you, but it has been
discussed openly in these hearings.
Mr. Allen. I understand that, but I am sworn to support
Ambassador Negroponte. He of course controls sources and
methods, and he classifies my budget. My budget is approved by
Secretary Chertoff but it reflects the priorities of Ambassador
Negroponte, and he submits this budget to you.
Mr. Linder. Is it your judgment that most of the
biosciences technology out there can be got through open
sources? Are we doing a lot on open source examination?
Mr. Allen. I don't want to go into details about that, but,
yes, I think we can say, and it has been said repeatedly by
many specialists, that there has been a great deal of
information dealing with how to use bioscience for nefarious
purposes, and it goes back to literature that has been
available for many years. It goes back probably to 1960s and
1970s.
So there is, even though we worry, as I said in my
statement, about advanced biotechnology, my worry with
terrorists deals with, as I said, those who may have some
knowledge of biotechnology and may be able to use somewhat
cruder methods. But the results, Mr. Chairman, could be very
devastating to our country, to our homeland security.
Mr. Linder. You said that we knew factually that al-Qa'ida
was seeking to develop BW weapons, and we have disrupted a
significant part of their network, but we said we judge its
intent to develop BW continues. Is that based upon a
presumption, or do we have more information?
Mr. Allen. I do not want to speak on specifics here but
based on what has been publicly released and based on the
statements that we have just seen from the leadership of Osama
bin Laden, Dr. Zawahiri and others, their intent is to attack
and destroy the United States and its interests worldwide.
I think we have every reason to believe that Osama bin
Laden has never changed his opinion. As you recall, I believe
there was a fatwa issued back in February of 1998, which said
it was okay to use nonconventional weaponry in attacking the
United States and the West.
I don't believe we have any evidence to suggest that they
are somehow becoming benevolent in their attitudes towards the
United States.
Mr. Linder. Mr. Pease, the biological community is a
scientific community. Scientists have spent their entire
academic career going through wide open processes, publishing
everything, sharing, traveling to seminars in various
countries, a wide open environment. That is not the
Intelligence Community's environment.
Are those two circumstances antithetical?
Mr. Pease. Antithetical, perhaps not cross-cultural,
certainly, and you will see the intelligence professionals in
this room twitch that it is an open room. We know that they can
learn things in that open environment that we are interested
in. We know that there is much that they learn in that open
environment that they are not in a position to judge. Is it
illicit activity that they are hearing references to completely
legitimate activity.
We know that we have got to sift through much low grade ore
in those kinds of conferences to get the kinds of nuggets that
are of an intelligence interest and are actionable in the
intelligence channel.
We are willing to put up with the cross-cultural
communication that I referred to to get at some of that
knowledge. It is a slow, frustrating process to do that.
Where we do best is where outside biological experts have
worked with us for long enough that they get a sense of what we
can use and what is just a distraction to them.
Mr. Linder. Why is any of this life sciences information
even necessary to be classified?
Mr. Pease. The life sciences information I would suggest
overwhelmingly needs to be unclassified if we are talking about
healing diseases for people. You would not find me arguing that
we need to lock down that knowledge or that if we wanted to we
could. In that knowledge is an inherent threat, and that is
part of the threat that we live with, and we are all seized
with just how very real that is.
Mr. Linder. That is for analytical people?
Mr. Pease. Indeed.
Mr. Linder. Dr. MacDougall, have our BW programs that we
used to have in the 1950s and 1960s ended?
Mr. MacDougall. Yes.
Mr. Linder. Have they been helpful to us in learning about
other proposals, or are they so old with such refined agents
that they are not applicable to today?
Mr. MacDougall. No, sir. Actually, we continue to draw on
the knowledge that was developed during this program,
activities, and, indeed, I would make sure we catalog the
amount of that, making it available to the analytic community,
indications of the kinds of activities we might otherwise
expect foreigners to pursue. So that is a valuable resource on
behalf of the analytic community.
Mr. Linder. Mr. Allen, would it be helpful for us to have
security clearances for State public health leaders so that
they could be more involved in the information and be more
engaged in seeking what might be threatening?
Mr. Allen. As I indicated in my statement, one of our
responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security is to
serve as a conduit to get information and to share that
information with State and local governments and with the
private sector, and we try to do that right across the board on
all threats.
Obviously at some levels, in some issues, it is helpful,
and, of course, we have the ability and the responsibility on a
select basis to clear people who may need Secret-level
clearances. This is not a big issue. I sponsor clearances at
State and local level and obviously with the private sector as
well.
Most of our information though is advisory and is out there
at sort of--at a sensitive but unclassified level for their
purposes. We have a growing and developing rich relationship at
the State and local level.
Mr. Langevin and others, and I have talked about this. We
have all been up to--he asked us to talk to some people in
Massachusetts about sharing some information.
Mr. Linder. Thank you all.
Mr. Langevin.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for
your testimony. It has been very helpful.
I would like to turn our attention, if I could, to the area
of study of the life sciences and cultural exchanges. One of
our best defenses, I guess an interesting conundrum, you might
say, one of our best defenses is to bring people here to see
the United States, to experience freedom and democracy
themselves, as opposed to just getting information about what
the United States stands for from Al Jazeera or other networks.
Yet if a student comes here to study life sciences, I am
told, that even at the basic science 101 levels they learned
quite a bit and could actually--the studies could actually turn
out to be dangerous, they could choose to use it against us.
What are your recommendations in the field of managing that
relationship, who comes here and studies, and your thoughts on
it?
Mr. Brill. Well, I would be happy to take an initial crack
at it. I will defer to Mr. Allen.
Mr. Allen. I will speak as well.
Mr. Brill. Speaking as someone who worked in the diplomatic
realm and who is now in the intelligence realm, I think your
characterization of people coming to America, learning about
America is useful. Building those bridges is very important for
our national security.
When it comes to studying technical issues, the issue is
not so much at the basic level. You can study basically almost
any place in the world now. In fact, the United States higher
education is competing with a number of other countries, higher
education institutions.
So knowledge is rapidly dispersed in the age of
globalization we live in. I think what is important is that
when people come to this country we would like to make sure
when they are doing advance studies they are working in areas
that are constructive. I think that when they study in the
United States they tend to study in an environment that
promotes constructive use of technology as opposed to
destructive use of it. Generally it is good. We have to be
careful in some specific areas.
Mr. Allen. Congressman Langevin, it is a very good
question. We have to do the balance. Of course, part of the
responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security is to
ensure that as we look at visas and how they are issued for
students by the Department of State, that these are handled in
a very careful way.
Of course, as you know, we have various checklists, and I
think, from what I see, prior to 2001, what we see today, we
encourage foreign students from across the world to come and
study in the United States. I think it is absolutely crucial.
But there is greater care as visas are issued and students come
here. We are doing this in a number of visa areas, including
religious workers where we had a very carte blanche approach
one time and now it is much tighter.
Mr. Langevin. In Part I of our hearing, the witnesses were
all very impressed with the sophistication of the biological
and medical and intelligence capabilities of the Armed Forces
Medical Intelligence Center, AFMIC. Of course this is an open-
ended unclassified hearing, if you could please describe the
major activities of AFMIC and how we might describe that as a
model beyond military mission of force production and apply
these techniques to military technology activity.
Mr. MacDougall. Sir, if you will beg my indulgence, we have
with me today the chief scientist for the Armed Forces Medical
Intelligence Center, Dr. Miller. I would like her to respond to
that question.
Ms. Miller. Thank you. I am honored to speak with you this
afternoon. The Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center is part
of the Defense Intelligence Agency. We have been part of the
Defense Intelligence Agency since the early 1990s, but we have
been part of the medical intelligence since the 1900s, as part
of the Army.
We have a long history of doing medical intelligence. Our
primary role is to look at foreign infectious disease,
environmental health threats, medical infrastructure, health
systems and biotechnology trends. We do that in support of the
White House, the Secretary of Defense and other Federal agents.
So our role is to look at foreign infectious diseases and how
they might impact forces being sent overseas.
But we also now have a role of looking at those foreign
infectious diseases and what impact they may have on the health
or welfare of the United States in our role partnering with the
Department of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and
the USDA.
So we are actively engaged in improving our scientific
expertise by having rotations of our partner agencies. We use
as a model a foreign example for you this afternoon. Our
military members that are staffed at AFMIC come from the
medical services of the Army, Navy and the Air Force. They are
medical professionals. They come to AFMIC for a 3-year tour,
and we train them in intelligence. So they have scientific and
technical expertise in their various fields, virology,
environmental health, industrial hygiene, toxicology. I could
go on.
Mr. Langevin. Could I ask, in that respect, that is an
interesting issue because it raises another question I was
going to ask. I was going to get back to how we could apply
these to these techniques, to nonmilitary intelligence
activities. But the other thing is, is it better to train
medical personnel in the area of intelligence and analysis or
is it better to do it the other way around?
Ms. Miller. Let me answer the first question first, then I
will get to the second one. I use that military medical
professionals as a model, because that is a model that I think
is relevant across the Community. With other agencies, to have
them come and do a 3-year tour at AFMIC I think would be
beneficial, not only to AFMIC, because it gives us reachback to
their agencies, but also to their agencies it gives them
training and understanding of intelligence and how to apply
intelligence in their decisionmaking. That is why I gave that
example.
I think I forgot your second question, if you will forgive
me.
Mr. Langevin. If you want to expand on what you were saying
originally, whether it is better--
Ms. Miller. To train medical professionals or intelligence
professionals. I think you will get a different answer if you
looked across the table. For medical intelligence, I totally
agree that you have to have a multidisciplinary team, that
intelligence is not just about the science, it is about the
threat. The threat, if it is counterproliferation, may be
intent, and my colleagues can talk more eloquently about that.
But in the medical arena, it is contextualizing the
intelligence. Just because you are a scientist does not
necessarily mean that you are trained in analysis and can
contextualize the intelligence. It is really important to have
a multidisciplinary team.
Mr. Linder. Would you yield?
Mr. Langevin. Of course.
Mr. Linder. I would like to ask you a question on that. We
have medical personnel at all of our embassies, and we have
undercover people at many embassies for the CIA. Would it be
helpful for them in our program to have a 10-week course in
epidemiology to recognize some of these problems?
Ms. Miller. Well, you are speaking to an epidemiologist so
I guess my answer would probably be--epidemiology is a
multidisciplinary field. It trains you to look at the question.
My background is, I am a former epidemic intelligence, foreign
intelligence officer from the CDC. So I have been trained to
look at what is the question.
That is the bottom line for intelligence, too. You have to
use the evidence that you have from your science background,
but you also have to answer the question in an actionable form.
Mr. Linder. Which you did not do. The question was, would
it be helpful to have some epidemiology training for--
Ms. Miller. Well, I am not sure I should tell the
Department of State what to do with their medical officers,
but, yes, I do believe it would be helpful.
Mr. Linder. Thank you.
Mr. Langevin. Can you touch upon the Armed Forces Medical
Intelligence Center's real-time monitoring that you do, and is
that a robust system in terms of being able to know rather
quickly if there is an outbreak somewhere? Or if there is
something that doesn't look like something naturally occurring
or a bioweapons attack or something that would happen, would
you know that real-time or after the fact?
Ms. Miller. In this forum I would say it has to depend. We
are focused on specific diseases of concern to military
operations at this time. If we are talking about real-time
warning, I don't think there is such a thing within the Public
Health Community or the Intelligence Community on infectious
diseases.
We need to improve public health infrastructure so that we
can detect events early. That, I think, is part of our Nation's
goals in partnering with other foreign nations, with health and
human services and their efforts overseas with the Department
of Defense overseas laboratories.
Mr. Langevin. I asked the question, because one of the
things that we have a concern about is our ability to monitor
public systems as policymakers, or at the top levels of health,
and enhancing our ability to respond more quickly if there were
an outbreak or something to that effect. Is there something you
wanted to share with us in that respect?
Ms. Miller. Well, I think we need to continue to be
vigilant. We need to continue to improve. But intelligence is
one of the many tools that we use in monitoring the world
globally.
And our role is to try to identify those events that may be
gaps where the Health and Human Services or others don't have
access to that information and to contextualize those. So we do
focus very clearly limited resources on key countries that
perhaps are non-permissive. We do get information in the public
health community through the WHO and through Health and Human
Services from many countries directly, and that perhaps we
should be focused in intelligence where are the gaps. That is
what we are looking at with our partners.
Mr. Allen. Congressman Langevin, could I just add to her
comments. Under the Department of Homeland Security, we have
the National Bio-Surveillance Integration System that has just
been standing up under the Chief Medical Officer. This group
looks worldwide, globally at any kind of early warning, looking
at open material around the world to see if there are any
indications of a natural outbreak, or maybe something that
would be more nefarious. My office provides intelligence in
support of the National Bio-Surveillance Integration System.
And we certainly--this group works with AFMIC very closely.
Mr. Langevin. My last question, if I could, in our last
hearing it was mentioned that the failure of the Chiron Company
to provide flu vaccine for the 2004-2005 flu season, and now
the Avian flu influenza situation are example perhaps of
intelligence failings. For example, the intelligence community
would have been well aware of a pending oil shortage or other
substance considered important for national security. AFMIC
would know, for example, if the Pentagon had enough vaccines or
other protective health measures for their soldiers.
So the question is do you think the intelligence committee
should include the threat of infectious diseases, whether
intentionally or naturally occuring, as a threat that must be
cracked?
Ms. Miller. Yes, sir, I do.
Mr. Allen. I think we have no choice, because we have to
make certain that when we see an outbreak, I think AFMIC does
it very well, to make certain that this is natural, that it is
nothing something being spread by bioterrorists. It is
incumbent on the intelligence community to look at it very
hard.
Mr. Linder. Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. I want to thank you for your important work and
with the new configuration post-9/11, you are the real start-up
people. I really want to--I have a couple of questions, but I
want to build on what the ranking member has just indicated,
because if you were to ask the average American today what bio
threat concerned her, you would probably come back with
something that perhaps is not normally understood in the
intelligence community so much as a quote bio threat, and that
is, of course, Avian flu. And the President or the
administration has just rolled out some plans on that with some
controversy, but it obviously is trying to get ahead of that.
My question really goes to what the 9/11 legislation was
trying to do, and one of the things was to deal with the
stovepiping. Of course, my district is the district which had
the anthrax matter and was, I think, dealt with well, largely
because it never spread in the way it might have. But obviously
with Avian flu, that kind of pandemic that the public has been
hearing so much about, there is a great concern about whether
or not this really could be passed to humans, whether it could
make it here. Indeed, there is some view that yes, it could, it
is when will it make it here.
I don't understand and would like to know from you what--in
some of the other committees, we have talked to CDC. I don't
understand what, if any, role you play in matters like
predicting whether or not this kind of pandemic is making its
way to our shores.
When you talk about foreign diseases, that is the first
thing I think the average person would think about, would be
this flu, and particularly given the fact that it is new, we
have no vaccine, we don't have any effective drugs, we are told
that there are very limited--I am not sure if it is 5,000 doses
of what drug we do have. The plan that was rolled out yesterday
didn't even say who should get those drugs, limited as they
are, as a priority. That is, at the very least, it seems to me
what I would have wanted to know.
As far as I am concerned, I hope it would go to health care
workers to handle the rest of us.
In any case, I am really interested in here is something
right on the front pages. There you are. Are you relevant to
it? Do you help predict whether or not it is coming and when?
What is your relationship to the CDC and others are charged
with working on this matter?
Mr. Brill. Let me take a crack at a little bit of an
umbrella statement and turn to Mr. Allen for more detailed
comment. As I mentioned in my statement, the challenge of
pandemics for the intelligence community is that we are there
to help. It is principally a public health issue. And you have
to think, I think, about information on bio threats running
across a continuum of publicly available information, medically
available information, intelligence kinds of information. I
think the role of the intelligence community in something like
a pandemic is to make sure that U.S. authorities have available
to them information relevant to a pandemic that may not be
publicly available for one reason or another. One can imagine a
variety of reasons people might trying to be cover up
information about it. Our job in that case would be to find
information that should be available to people.
Ms. Norton. For example, everybody is looking for a bird to
fly in, and that is how we might, in fact, find it on our
shores. Well, could somebody bring in a bird deliberately and
weaponize, as it were, some bird or other--
Mr. Brill. That would be clearly an intelligence-related
activity to be keeping--being alert to those efforts of people
to take advantage of a nationally occurring disease and to turn
it into something that would be applied as a weapon. There is a
role for the intelligence community in that.
Ms. Norton. Would that be your role, from what I just
described. CDC is supposed to look for the bird flying up
there. Who looks for somebody bringing in a bird?
Mr. Brill. Let me defer. What NCPC does is what you
referred to as post-9/11, is breaking down stovepipes. We are
part of the OD&I, bringing people together. The second
conference of U.S. Government officials, as I mentioned in my
opening statement, is about bringing the intelligence community
together with the rest of the U.S. Government agencies that are
involved in issues like international public health questions
to make sure that information the intelligence community
generates would be relevant to what they do and information
they generate would be relevant to helping the intelligence
community in its mission. It is two different kinds of
communities, one dealing with basically unclassified
information, the other dealing with classified.
Ms. Norton. Do you deal with CDC, for example, now, as I
speak?
Mr. Brill. Not personally. The intelligence community does,
yes. Let me defer now to our Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Allen. Thank you very much, Ambassador.
Congresswoman, obviously, I am speaking from an
intelligence perspective, and the part of Homeland Security
works very closely with Health and Human Services, including
obviously the Center for Disease Control.
Ms. Norton. Which, of course, is not even in the
intelligence community, not in homeland security.
Mr. Allen. I think the Ambassador has described very well
the intelligence responsibilities, that is to look and try to
track the spread of the avian flu, and of course, this has been
detected in Asia and parts of Europe. As you know, the H5M1
virus, it has notSec. it has not spread here to the United
States, and it is very rare and very difficult for either
poultry or migratory birds to spread this disease to humans. It
has not been--there has been no cases of human to human
transmission.
But, at the same time, and I don't want to speak about all
the preparations that health and human services and the rest of
the Department of Homeland Security are undertaking, that was,
of course, what Ms. Townsend spoke about yesterday from the
White House. There is an extraordinary effort underway. Our
role is to look at the intelligence to make sure that we have
good information and that countries abroad are not hiding the
extent and spread of that disease.
Part of our responsibility, of course, is to work with our
chief medical officer and keep him and Secretary Chertoff
briefed, and to also work with the National Bio-Surveillance
Integration group which is under the chief medical officer. So
it is an effort to ensure that all information, including
classified information, is brought to bear to Secretary
Chertoff, to Ms. Townsend and to other leaders in the Secretary
of Health and Human Services.
Mr. Pease may have some comments on this about the analytic
side.
Mr. Pease. The nexus of disease and use of the disease as a
warfare tactic, maybe I can illustrate with some cooperation
that we did with CDC during the West Nile virus--``scare'' is
the wrong word--but when that was on the front pages of the
papers. And we had allegations that West Nile was being
intentionally spread by one of our foreign folks.
There were allegations in intelligence channels of that.
That would have been an event and was indeed an event where we
were very quickly in touch with the Center for Disease Control
looking for any signs that this is unnaturally spreading. In
this particular event, it did not play out as a biological
warfare tactic, it played out as a natural spreading event. But
that kind of dialog between the intelligence community and the
Center for Disease Control is what you would expect to happen,
and what indeed did happen very quickly.
Ms. Norton. That is exactly the kind of information I was
looking for, particularly since CDC is not in Homeland Security
and not in the intelligence network.
One more question, if I may, Mr. Chairman.
Ambassador Brill raised an issue that is of great
importance to me in another of my committees. There is a huge
issue involving the Federal workforce that has--could be
depleted tomorrow, frankly, because of early retirement, huge
issue of competing with the private sector and highly
specialized personnel. Ambassador Brill, in his testimony,
alluded to this issue as part of what you see as the mission to
build a workforce. And I take it it is a Governmental
workforce. We have got to have folks on the inside and, of
course, use what is available to us in the private sector.
But my question really goes to where the exciting things
are happening. Exciting things are happening in science in the
private sector. Nobody can put in an amendment to keep them
from looking at this, that and the other. If you are one of the
young people, and there are far too few of them, who are
graduating, particularly with a Ph.D. from one of our
universities today, one is really left to wonder what it is
that would draw you to the Federal Government and where we are
going to get a workforce that is of the quality we need when we
are competing with the private sector where all the innovation
and where all the discovery is taking place.
It is very worrisome to me because I don't see that we are
able to get workforce in areas that are far less specialized
and far less skilled than the workforce we will need if the
biological areas that have been under discussion here today.
I appreciate how you think we can do that and what we could
do, what kinds of extra incentives we need.
Mr. Brill. Let me speak from the perspective of the ODNI
and urge my colleagues to jump in as well. What it takes, I
think, is a strategic approach for this very important issue
across the intelligence enterprise, not one agency at a time.
In the past, the intelligence community didn't have really the
authorities to operate personnel issues across the enterprise
the way it does now with the establishment of the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence.
In the counterproliferation area, we plan to take full
advantage of these authorities to think strategically about how
we hire and retain the people to do the important work that
needs to be done at WMD.
I think, quite frankly, as someone who is not from the
intelligence community, from the foreign service, I am not a
scientist, I am one of those classic liberal arts types, but
what is happening now in the intelligence community and the
challenges that the intelligence community is dealing with in
the S&T areas, science and technology area, having been briefed
in recent months on this, is some of the most exciting and
challenging science you can imagine a bright young person might
want to take on. The question is how do we get that word out to
people, set up a career structure that is attractive and get
people in to do it. Because we can't go into details in an open
session, but we want physicists to bend the laws of physics,
chemists to do remarkably interesting things for us in order to
deal with the challenges we face in counterproliferation and
the intelligence community.
So we have the work that can excite and attract people but
we have to think as an enterprise about how do that so we don't
compete with each other and set up a system of incentives that
will work.
Mr. Pease. If I could throw in a ray of hope here. The last
recruiting trip that I went on was last October, in this case,
out to the west coast. Because of my office, I am trying not to
recruit technically trained people from academic institutions
when I go to an academic institution to recruit. Every day that
I was out there recruiting, I had a full day with people lined
up wanting to talk to me about working in the CIA. I had not
anticipated this. I have done this 2 years in a row, the same
universities, and I expected that because of the increase in
bad press about CIA that the lines would disappear. Lot of
lines of people wanting to see whether their skills would be
suitable to our work, wanting to see if they could launch a
career where they can make a difference in working against the
bad guys. It was one of the most invigorating things that I
have done in the last year, but it is echoed by what I hear
from my other recruiters that have gone all over the United
States.
Ms. Norton. Yes.
Mr. MacDougall. We have no shortage of good resumes coming
into the community of the highest caliber technical folks and
the percentage of Ph.D. and advance degrees in our workforces.
Ms. Norton. In what fields?
Mr. MacDougall. All kinds of fields. Microbiologists,
technical experts in bioengineering and the like, critical to
this problem set for us. As I think was emphasized earlier by
my colleagues, building the expertise within the community is
our first and most important job. We must have experts looking
at the critical data that help us unlock the secrets in order
to assess the threats. And that starts with our cadre. We echo
and we champion the National Counterproliferation Center's
strategy in this because it is fundamental in my opinion to the
future of this workforce. So I share my colleague's ray of
hope. It has been very invigorating. Extraordinarily talented
folks coming to us.
Mr. Allen. Congresswoman, I would like to speak also. We
are just standing up my Office or Intelligence, we are very
new, and we are standing up a bioterrorism section. We have
four people working in it and we have two that more we are
hiring. Two of those officers currently have their Ph.D. We are
getting good applications. I just reclassified some of my
positions that are yet to be filled for entry level students
off the universities. We also sent a small recruiting team to a
number of universities and the response has been really
astounding. There are a lot of good, bright young Americans out
there wanting to work for their country.
Ms. Norton. The novelty of it should be very helpful to
you. We have got some of the best and brightest during the new
deal and people saw new agencies and things the government
hadn't done before. I had read about what the CIA has done. I
don't care if it is from CSI or whatever kinds of movies, I was
very encouraged by that.
What really encourages me and gives me an understanding
that I did not have before is your discussion of the
enterprise. If you want to compete with someone really, really
juiced up about something about something that a particular
private sector scientific corporation is doing, one way, and I
am particularly interested in science, one way might be the
enterprise nature of the Federal Government, the notion that
you could, in fact, get work in various aspects, bio threats,
for example, you could work across the agencies.
You could get the kind of experience you could never get in
any one private corporation. Seems to me that would be
exciting, and maybe even exciting enough to take the pay that
you have to take or the pay cut that you have to take by coming
to work for the Federal Government.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Linder. I thank you all. This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:04 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]