Re-Thinking Bio-Chemical Dangers

[Guest guest]

Dr. Sokolski is Executive Director of the Nonproliferation

Policy Education Center in Washington, D.C.

RETHINKING BIO-CHEMICAL DANGERS

by Henry Sokolski

Last year President Clinton announced the U.S. would spend

$10 billion on countering terrorism, including biological

and chemical threats, for fiscal year 2000. The presumption

was that the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas subway attack of l995

was likely to happen here on a much grander scale. Yet,

since 1900 there have only been seventy-one known terrorist

acts worldwide involving the use of chemical or biological

agents. Of the 123 fatalities these attacks caused, only one

was American. As for biological attacks worldwide, seventy

have occurred in the last century causing nine deaths but

only eighteen of these seventy attacks were made by

terrorists. These are not large numbers. That said, how

much should one make of them? There are, after all, risks

not only in underestimating the chemical and biological

domestic terrorist threat, but in overestimating it as well.

So far, such downside risks have received scant attention.

The most prominent of these include:

* Raising public consciousness about the possible threat in

a manner that emboldens criminals and terrorists to attempt

precisely what the government and public want to avoid.

* Reassuring the public about the preparedness of government

such that any government shortcoming is likely to be

magnified to politically fatal levels.

* Preemptively undermining U.S. civil liberties in the name

of enhanced homeland defense by encouraging scenarios

similar to Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas, that inspire chemical

or biological " Oklahoma City " incidents in retaliation.

* Expanding the martial law into the domestic realms of law

enforcement by making the response to domestic chemical and

biological attacks a core military mission.

* Distracting the military from chemical and biological and

conventional threats to U.S. bases and embassies overseas.

* Encouraging an " America first " siege mentality and a

retreat from foreign commitments critical to our nation's

security.

Most of these risks, of course, are far from immediate.

This, however, could change. Certainly, the downside risks

listed are at least as likely as the domestic biological and

chemical terrorism threats that might generate them. If we

are serious about one, we need to be serious about the

other. The question is how? Focusing on two broad

considerations should help. The first is determining just

how practical current chemical and biological agents are for

military and terrorist use. The second is identifying what

defensive strengths the U.S. can exploit to mitigate these

threats.

About traditional chemical agents, history suggests that in

military settings they injure far more than they kill.

Thus, on the Western Front in World War I it took an average

of just over a ton of agent to kill a single soldier. Only

two or three percent of those exposed to gas on the Western

Front actually died, and gas was responsible for no more

than 5 percent of the war's total casualties. In Iraq's war

against Iran, chemical weapons killed 5,000 Iranians. This

constituted less than one percent of the 600,000 Iranians

who died from all causes during the war.

If military use of chemical and biological agents has been

historically rare, domestic criminal and terrorist use of

them has been rarer still. Technically, using chemicals to

produce massive casualties is difficult, as demonstrated by

the Aum Shinrikyo experience. In an attack a year before the

famous Tokyo subway strike, things went awry. The intended

targets -- three judges -- failed to receive fatal doses.

Instead, wind blew the agent in the wrong direction and

killed seven innocents. Nor are the perpetrators themselves

immune. One of the Aum terrorists was overwhelmed by the

agent he tried to deliver (a risk also run by those

producing the agent). Also, in the case of the most

successful of the subway attacks, the sarin was not

optimized for the widest possible dissemination, i.e., as a

gas. All twelve of the deaths caused by the attack were due

to the victims' direct contact with liquid sarin. Optimizing

the agents' delivery with aerosol dispensers, however, would

have increased the risk of killing the carriers and the

likelihood of the operation being discovered by law

enforcement officials. The technical challenges of

terrorists using traditional biological agents to produce

massive fatalities are no less daunting. Biological agents

are lethal only if inhaled, and particles larger than ten

microns are likely to be blocked before they reach the

lungs. On the other hand, agent particles approaching one

micron are likely to be exhaled and so will not remain in

the lungs. Operationally, particles sized between five and

ten microns are optimal.

Spreading biological agent in particles of that precise

size, however, is difficult. The only organizations that

have done so are states. Sunlight, moreover, kills or

denatures most biological agents (making night-time

dispersal imperative), and wind patterns and humidity can

reduce the lethality of an anthrax attack 1,000 fold. All of

the above observations pertain to the use of traditional

chemical and biological agents to produce massive

casualties. Two developments, however, may change the way we

look at chemical and biological munitions. The first is

Russia's recent development of a far more lethal and

persistent family of binary chemical substances known as

Novichok (Russian for " newcomer " ) agents. The second is the

possible development of a new class of biological agents

known as bioregulators.In the late 1980s and early 1990s,

Russia produced several new agents that were made of

chemicals not controlled by the Chemical Weapons Convention.

These agents, referenced by a variety of code names

including Substance 33, A-230, A-232, A-234, Novichok-5,

Novichok-7, are geared for the deployment of binaries

munitions that use two agents that are benign when kept

separate, but lethal when mixed. Indeed, these chemical are

at least as toxic and persistent as the most lethal nerve

agent, VX, and some are reported to be ten times as toxic.

At the same time, they are far more difficult to detect and

far easier to manufacture covertly since they can be made

with common chemicals in relatively simple pesticide

factories. Finally, unlike VX, which can be defeated quickly

with injectable antidotes, Novichok agents are at least as

resistant to treatment as Soman.Clearly, these agents are

much more attractive for military use than traditional

agents. If delivery were accomplished covertly with special

forces, there might not be any warning and targeted troops

would be unable to don protective gear before lethal

exposure. Also, given these agents' persistence and

lethality, far less would be needed to accomplish any given

mission. More remote than Novichok agents, but still

worrisome, is the prospect that incapacitants known as

bioregulators might be developed in a form that could be

weaponized. Bioregulators are present in our bodies in small

amounts. They determine hormone release, control of body

temperature, sleep, mood, consciousness, and emotions. Using

the latest recombinant-DNA techniques, scientists might

modify bioregulators to enhance their potency and effect.

So far, the key obstacle to weaponizing such agents has been

dissemination. Assuming further research overcomes these

problems, though, such bioregulator agents would be

militarily attractive for three reasons. First, their

novelty would almost guarantee their ability to evade

current biological agent detectors. Second, unlike other

biological agents, they would have immediate effects and

thus could be used to disrupt military. Third, they could

be far potency as compared to traditional chemical agents.

Given their novelty and complexity, use of bioregulators or

Novichok agents by terrorists is hardly eminent. However,

the possibility of criminals or terrorists using traditional

agents, if only to cause panic through minor attacks, cannot

be dismissed. Fortunately, the U.S. has considerable

resources already in place to address such threats. All

told, there are 32,000 fire departments, 8,000 emergency

medical services, and 17,000 law-enforcement agencies in the

U.S., constituting a force of over 2 million first-

responders. A good number of fire departments located in

industrial areas already are trained to deal with hazardous

chemicals. With additional training and equipment, chemical

terrorism could be addressed by these and other departments

merely as an additional hazardous materials issue. As for

dealing with domestic biological terrorism, the U.S. is

blessed with a massive health care system. The country

spends nearly four times as much on its public health and

medical system as it does on its entire military. Factor in

the fire-fighting services and police, and it is clear that

these civilian institutions (and the Centers for Disease

Control) are the ones best positioned to respond to domestic

terrorism. Indeed, relying more heavily on these

institutions than the military has several advantages.

First, they are already locally deployed. Second, having

them address chemical and biological terrorism should

improve public safety and health generally. Thus, enhancing

our health care system's ability to deal with natural

incidents should only improve its ability to cope with

terrorist incidents and vice versa. Indeed, what is

critical to treating both, in this case, is early detection,

and there are far more natural disease outbreaks to monitor

and report than terrorist acts.

Finally, using civilian institutions avoids the downside

risks of relying too much on the military. Not only are

civil liberties likely to be safer, but our military's

ability to focus on its own self-defense will be improved.

As it is, the military needs to bring its chemical and

biological protection and decontamination units to bear

sooner overseas, where the likelihood of use is highest.

Also, our military must do more to tackle the difficult task

of developing detection and protection capabilities

(especially against new agents, such as the Novichok family)

and to stay ahead of whatever other agents hostile

biotechnologists might develop.The point here is not to

dismiss the possibility of any particular chemical or

biological threat, but rather to weigh how much attention

each one deserves. Assuming we are not foolish enough to

demand 100 percent protection against all attacks, our

medical system, federal and local governments, and military

should be able to ensure against a lasting, strategic

calamity. The key to success, however, will be the same as

it was a decade ago in Desert Shield, which is to avoid

focusing on the most horrific scenarios at the expense of

preparing for the most likely ones.