From the WSJ Opinion Archives
OUTSIDE THE BOX
The Bugs of War
Kill the terrorists before they strike with bioweapons.
Ken Alibek, author of "Biohazard" and once the colonel in charge of the Soviet bioterrorism program, reminded us at a Hudson Institute conference on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction that "bioweapons . . . are cheap, easy to make and easy to use. In the coming years they will become very much a part of our lives."
Thankfully they are not yet a part of our lives, but they are very much on our minds as the FBI warns of "spectacular attacks," the Washington Post features front-page stories on "4 Nations Thought To Posses Smallpox" and "Concerns About 'Dirty Bomb' Drive Efforts to Find [Soviet] Radioactive Cesium." Last week brought another Osama bin Laden tape warning of impending attacks, and Britain, France and German governments warn of possible attacks in Europe.
As Pentagon official Dale Klein said at the Hudson conference: "As the war against terrorism continues, we will long for the good old days when we had only one enemy, and we knew who it was."
Terrorists have a wide range of weapons of mass destruction to choose from, including nuclear bombs, by far the most destructive and dangerous weapons but also the most difficult to build and handle. They can more easily work with "dirty bombs" (a bomb detonated with 1.75 ounces of Cesium 137--a commonly available medical X-ray material--could radioactively contaminate 60 square blocks of a city), biological weapons such as sarin (the Tokyo subway toxin), anthrax, smallpox, Ebola and some two dozen other biological agents. The Washington Post reports that unnamed Bush administration sources say both Iraq and North Korea have stocks of the smallpox pathogen.
Some terrorist or terror group distributed high-quality anthrax in Florida, New York and Washington last year. It was not made in a derelict basement by a disgruntled felon; it was a professional job that achieved a basic terrorist objective: spreading fear among the American population. Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter and author of "Germs, Biological Weapons and America's Secret War," notes that 30,000 people were put on medication from a quantity of anthrax equal to about two pats of butter.
Bringing chemical or biological weapons into America would not be difficult. Fifty thousand cargo containers arrive every day through our ports or by truck or rail from Canada and Mexico, and while gamma imaging systems can check their contents we are far from having a fully operational system. Some 800,000 truck shipments of various hazardous materials also move within our country each day as well, some of which would be dangerous in the hands of terrorists.
Consider the public reaction to a biological attack in any major American city. We would not immediately know the biological agent that was used, how far the danger extends, or what remedies are necessary. These questions would take time and work on the ground to answer. But the reaction of people is easy to predict: They would want to get away from the area as quickly as they can. It is not fantasy to say that hundreds of thousands of scared and angry people (out of a city's population of millions) would head to suburbs or rural areas to escape the threat to their health and lives.
There are plans to deal with such scenarios, but we are far from prepared. Every city must develop a secure, online compilation of the location of its hospitals, factories, railroads, power plants, tunnels, bridges and communications systems. Emergency and health personnel must be trained in biological and chemical remediation. An evacuation plan must be prepared to get people out of the infected area, and a means of coordinating the response--a common radio frequency for starters--of police, fire, medical, hospital and governmental agencies. That's not easy either. Houston for example, has 109 organizations that deal with these matters, and at least 26 federal agencies will be involved, from the military to health and disease control agencies. Then there are the president, governors, mayors and fire chiefs who somehow must work together to evacuate and treat the injured, clean up the infectious material and make sure order is maintained.
The latter may be the biggest immediate challenge. What if those thousands of scared people surge into residential communities outside the city, demanding food and shelter, crowding into schools or apartment buildings, overwhelming stores to get supplies? How do authorities control all this and quell the panic? Think of the role of the media, and how the agencies of government must get accurate information to them; how they must be persuaded to give out facts and not panic-inducing stories or misinformation.
Deterrence "worked" against our Cold War enemy, for the Soviet Union was a nation that risked severe consequences to its own people should the U.S. retaliate against its aggression. But terrorists have no nation, no people and little at risk when they attack--indeed, they think paradise awaits them as a reward for their evil acts--, so they cannot be deterred. Thus destroying terrorist groups and keeping weapons of mass destruction out of their hands must be our highest priorities.
Which brings us back to Iraq, North Korea and other terrorist-supporting nations. Afghanistan served as a training camp for al Qaeda terrorists. Iraq is itself a terrorist regime--it has used chemical and biological weapons in the past and would not hesitate to use them in the future--and is supporting terrorist organizations. So removing Saddam Hussein will reduce the risk of terrorist attacks. The same is true of the governments of Iran, Libya, Syria and of course North Korea. "Regime change" in these nations is as important to the security of the United States as it is in Iraq.
Until that is accomplished, the challenge for America (and a perversely reluctant United Nations) is to disrupt terrorists' ability to acquire the most fearsome weapons, lest they use them to change history.
Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears Wednesdays.
