U.S. Justice Department Announces New Hazardous Materials Security Initiative

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday announced a new initiative designed to improve the security of hazardous material shipments by countering illegal shipments (see GSN, Aug. 22).

According to Ashcroft, more than 1.5 billion tons of hazardous materials are shipped each year, often on “complex shipment routes” which provide opportunities for potential terrorists.  A Justice investigation has found the potential for “significant and repeated illegal transport” of hazardous materials by air, sea, road and rail, Ashcroft said.

“Over the past two years terrorists have forced us to alter our assumptions about their targets and their tactics.  It is not difficult to postulate a terrorist attack that involves hazardous materials,” Ashcroft said.  “Thousands of deaths and injuries and severe property damage could result from an incident involving illegal transportation of hazardous materials,” he said.

Under the Hazardous Materials Transportation Initiative, Justice will use existing tools in environmental and safety laws to counter potential security threats arising from illegal hazardous material shipments, Ashcroft said.  The department has established a group of prosecutors from the Environment and Natural Resources Division who will work with U.S. attorneys and the Transportation Department to train enforcement and regulatory personnel to investigate and prosecute violators of hazardous material shipment requirements, he said.

“Compliance with and enforcement of these laws makes a real difference in our level of national preparedness,” Ashcroft said.  “All those who violate these laws are on notice.  We will prosecute those who knowingly break the law and endanger our land and our lives,” he said.

The new initiative is the latest in a series of measures implemented over the last year to help improve the security of hazardous material shipments.  In August, the Transportation Department’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration proposed a safety permit program for carriers of certain types of hazardous materials, including radioactive materials.  In May, the department required that drivers of hazardous material shipments would have to pass a federal background check (see GSN, May 6).  The department also required in March that hazardous material shipment carriers train their employees to respond to terrorist threats (see GSN, March 26).

Ashcroft also announced yesterday the first action on the new initiative — the guilty plea entered yesterday by Emory Worldwide Airlines to 12 felony violations of the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act.  The company had been charged with illegally transporting hazardous materials via aircraft, Ashcroft said, adding that the charges were unrelated to terrorist activity.  Under its guilty plea, Emory Worldwide Airlines will pay a $6 million fine and will develop a compliance plan to prevent future violations, he said.

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Bush Welcomes Investigation Into Identity Leak

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that he welcomed a Justice Department investigation into the leak of a CIA operative’s identity.  The operative is the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who this summer criticized a key piece of intelligence used to demonstrate that prewar Iraq was seeking to develop nuclear weapons (see GSN, Sept. 30).

Justice informed the White House Monday night of its decision to begin an investigation into the leak.  The investigation was prompted by a July 14th column by Robert Novak, in which he named Wilson’s wife and her status as a CIA “operative on weapons of mass destruction.”  Prior to Novak’s column, Wilson published a column in the New York Times describing a visit he made to Niger last year to investigate claims that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium there — a claim that he determined was unlikely to be true.

During a brief press conference yesterday in Chicago, Bush praised the Justice Department’s decision to open an investigation into the leak and expressed confidence in the department’s ability to fully and effectively conduct its investigation.

“I welcome the investigation,” Bush said.  “I’m actually confident that the Justice Department will do a very good job.  There’s a special division of career Justice Department officials who are tasked with doing this kind of work,” he said.

Bush also said the White House would cooperate fully with the investigation.

“I have told our administration, people in my administration to be fully cooperative.  I want to know the truth, and if anybody’s got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it’d be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business,” he said.

Congressional Democrats, however, continued yesterday to call for the appointment of a special counsel to conduct the investigation.

“If there was ever a case for the appointment of a special counsel, this is it,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday during a press conference in Washington.

“An independent investigation of this despicable matter must be undertaken immediately.  It must be thorough and it must be beyond question in terms of the vigor with which it is pursued,” she said.

During a brief and brusque press conference yesterday, Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected the calls for a special counsel.

“The prosecutors and agents who are and will be handling this investigation are career professionals with extensive experience in handling matters involving sensitive national security information, and with experience relating to investigations of unauthorized disclosures of such information,” Ashcroft said.

Republicans have charged Democrats with using the leak for political gain.

“Surprise, surprise, they are calling for a special counsel.  My goodness,” the Associated Press today quoted House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) as saying.  “It must be in their political handbook,” he said.

Pelosi yesterday denied that Democrats were playing politics with the issue.  “I think those kinds of accusations are pathetic,” she said.

For his part, Bush yesterday decried the culture of information leaks in Washington.

“Let me just say something about leaks in Washington.  There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington.  There’s leaks at the executive branch, there’s leaks in the legislative branch, there’s just too many leaks,” Bush said. 

“If there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.  And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of,” he said.

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Blair Defends Decision to Go to War With Iraq

British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday defended his decision to go to war against Iraq alongside the United States, saying he would make the same decision again today, according to the New York Times (see GSN, Sept. 30).

In a speech to the annual Labor Party conference, Blair said he went to war against Iraq because he believed it represented a new threat of a rogue state with the ability to provide terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.  Blair also countered critics of the British alliance with the United States, saying the decision to join Washington would help defend the country.

“If it is the threat of the 21st century, Britain should be in there helping confront it, not because we are America’s poodle but because dealing with it will make Britain safer,” Blair said.

While acknowledging critics of his decision to go to war, Blair also called for understanding of why he did so.

“I know many profoundly believe the action we took was wrong,” Blair said.  “I do not at all disrespect anyone who disagrees with me.  I ask just one thing:  attack my decision but at least understand why I took it and why I would take the same decision again,” he said (Warren Hodge, New York Times, Oct. 1).

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Informal Korean Nuclear Talks Held in New York

In an effort to set the stage for another round of talks on the Korean nuclear crisis, North Korean diplomats met with representatives from China, the United States, South Korea and Japan in New York earlier this week (see GSN, Sept. 30).

Li Gun, deputy director general of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s American Affairs Bureau, traveled to New York to represent Pyongyang (Vassily Golovnin, ITAR-Tass, Oct. 1).

In an address to the U.N. General Assembly yesterday, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon said Pyongyang would only return to talks on the nuclear standoff if Washington took “simultaneous action” to defuse the crisis.

“Under the present circumstance in which the D.P.R.K. and the United States are leveling guns at each other, asking the other party to put down the guns first does not make any sense,” Choe said.  “This can be construed only as an ulterior intention to disarm and kill the D.P.R.K.,” he added.

Choe said disarmament could take place if both sides act.

“Simultaneous action is a realistic way of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, and any opposition to it is tantamount to the refusal of the denuclearization,” he said (Priscilla Cheung, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 30).

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said today that Washington was not happy about the U.N. address.

“We’re a little disappointed with the speech that the vice minister of the D.P.R.K. made at the United Nations,” Kelly said.  Regarding potential talks, he said that the United States is “hoping to have something in the next month or five or six weeks, but we don’t know that for sure.”  Kelly was in Tokyo to meet with Japanese and South Korean officials on the crisis (Kenji Hall, Associated Press, Oct. 1).

A Japanese Foreign Ministry official said Tokyo was attempting to arrange another round of nuclear talks.

“Our policy of pushing for the earliest possible reopening of six-nation talks has not changed at all,” the official said (Ryan Nakashima, Agence France-Presse, Oct. 1).

South Korean Unification Minster Jeong Se-hyun, meanwhile, said yesterday that North Korea most likely wants to restart the nuclear talks and will probably not conduct nuclear tests, as it has previously threatened.

“Intelligence agencies in Seoul and Washington have concluded that such possibility is low,” he said (Carol Giacomo, Reuters, Sept. 30).

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IAEA Chief Expects Iran to Meet Nuclear Cooperation Deadline

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said yesterday that he expects Iran to prove it is not developing nuclear weapons before a U.N.-mandated Oct. 31 deadline (see GSN, Sept. 30).

“Four weeks is ample time for Iran to come up with a full and complete declaration,” said IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.  “The next few weeks are key to gauge the level of cooperation and transparency displayed by Iran,” he added.

ElBaradei said Iran should have no problem “telling us the full story,” but he added that it was unclear how long it would take IAEA inspectors to verify Iran’s claims.

“I am not going to scuttle the process because of a particular date, nor am I going to jump to conclusions,” he said (George Jahn, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 30).

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said today that the IAEA must not send the issue to the U.N. Security Council.

“The official position of the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding the Additional Protocol [which would allow more intrusive monitoring of Iran’s nuclear activities] … is for greater cooperation with the IAEA.  We are determined to have an active and transparent cooperation with the agency,” Kharazi said (Agence France-Presse, Oct. 1).

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Researchers Hand Over Worldwide Smallpox Study Results

A team of researchers in Washington yesterday delivered the results of a global study on potential drugs to treat the smallpox virus, according to the U.S. Defense Department (see GSN, Feb. 5).

Graham Richards, head of the Oxford University Chemistry Department, presented the results to U.S. and British officials at the British Embassy in Washington.  The study — which included technology partners IBM and United Devices — used the power of 1.3 million personal computers in more than 190 countries.  The computers’ owners donated their idle computers at www.grid.org, to produce an effect more powerful than the world’s 10 largest supercomputers combined, according to the Pentagon.

The study matched 35 million potential drug molecules against eight smallpox proteins in an effort to discover which molecules would bind to the virus.  Results of the study, which have narrowed the field of possible molecules that can be used for smallpox treatment, will also be turned over to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and to other governments (U.S. Defense Department release, Sept. 30).

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United States CW Specialists Monitor Scottish Whiskey Distillery

The U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency has been found to have been monitoring a Scottish whiskey distillery for evidence of chemical weapons activity, BBC News reported last week.

DTRA’s interest in the Bruichladdich Distillery on the island of Islay was revealed after an agency worker informed the distillery that one of its webcams had stopped working, according to BBC News.  The distillery had installed webcams to illustrate its techniques for interested Internet users.

“They said they had been monitoring our webcams because the process of making something very innocuous and pleasant is close to making weapons of mass destruction, apparently,” said Mark Reynier, managing director of the distillery (BBC News, Sept. 27).

“Whiskey has been called many things, but never a weapon of mass destruction.  It makes you wonder if the Americans have any chance of finding anything if they are watching a little distillery on a Hebridean island,” he added (Auslan Cramb, London Telegraph, Sept. 27).

A DTRA spokesman said that monitoring webcams was not a critical agency activity.

“I am fairly certain that monitoring Scottish distilleries and checking webcams from time to time is not high on our list of missions,” the agency spokesman said.  “The United States is part of the Chemical Weapons Convention and as such we are committed to the process of destroying chemical weapons.  That includes monitoring and visiting commercial facilities where they would be able to make chemical weapons,” he said (Just-drinks.com, Sept. 30).

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Russian Authorities Block Radioactive Material Sale

Russian authorities have arrested the deputy director of Atomflot, which operates and repairs Russian nuclear-powered icebreaking ships, for possessing about 2 kilograms of radioactive material, the London Guardian reported today (see GSN, June 18).

Alexander Tyuliakov was arrested after he attempted to sell undercover police a suitcase containing the material, which is believed to have included a small amount of uranium 235, according to the Guardian.  It is still unknown if Tyuliakov obtained the material from Atomflot or through contacts in the Russian nuclear industry (Nick Walsh, London Guardian, Oct. 1).

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U.S. Energy Department Seeks Authority to Reclassify Nuclear Waste

The U.S. Energy Department is seeking permission from Congress to redefine some stockpiles of nuclear waste as low-level waste to allow it to be left in place or be sent to low-level material storage sites, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Aug. 15).

Energy officials have said they previously believed they had discretion in classifying nuclear waste as either high-level or low-level material.  A federal judge in Idaho ruled in July, however, that the department’s plan for treating waste there violated laws requiring that high-level waste be buried underground.  The department is currently building an underground repository for high-level waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

In August, the Energy Department asked congressional leaders for the authority to decide what constituted nuclear waste, according to the Times.  Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee spokeswoman Marnie Funk said yesterday that the committee’s Republican majority would not approve the department’s language.

Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), the top Democrat on the committee, said that “if the DOE has the authority to change the classification of the waste at will, that pretty much undercuts any congressional control of the issue” (Matthew Wald, New York Times, Oct. 1).

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