Obama Admin. Receives "F" For Biological Attack Preparation

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

WMD Panel Gives F To Obama For Failing To Prepare For Bio-Weapons Attack


The Obama administration and Congress get an F for failing to prepare for a biological terrorist attack—a “national security” risk that is getting greater “by the day,” according to the director of a blue-ribbon federal panel set up to study the issue.

Borrowing a page from the 9/11 Commission, the bipartisan WMD panel is today issuing a “report card” on how the U.S. government has responded to its December 2008 recommendations for steps needed to prepare for the threat that terrorists will strike using nuclear or biological weapons.

The panel—chaired by former Democratic senator (and intelligence-committee chairman) Bob Graham and former GOP senator Jim Talent—concluded more than a year ago that there was better than a 50-50 chance that Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group would use weapons of destruction somewhere in the world in the next five years.

Since then, the risks of such an attack have only gotten greater, said Randell Larsen, the executive director of the panel, in an interview. “The further we go down the road, the easier it gets to make a biological weapon,” he told Declassified. “It’s getting easier every day.”

Larsen acknowledged that the panel is aware of no “tactical intelligence” that Al Qaeda is about to mount such an attack. But the panel’s updated report being released Tuesday finds that “it is well within [Al Qaeda’s] present capabilities to develop and use bioweapons.” (One ominous development was the release from a Malaysian prison—just days after the panel’s initial report—of Yazid Sufaat, a U.S.-trained microbiologist who had been working on developing a biological weapon for Al Qaeda.)

But the panel says the Obama administration and Congress get the lowest possible grade by failing to respond to one of its most important recommendations: taking steps to prepare vaccines, train medical workers, and conduct environmental cleanups in the event that a terrorist group unleashes anthrax or other biological weapons on the U.S. homeland. One development that underscored how woefully the government is prepared for such an attack was the problems encountered getting and distributing vaccines to deal with the H1N1 virus last year.

The panel estimates it would cost $3.4 billion a year for the next five years to do what is required to prepare for a biological-weapons attack, but the government is currently spending less than one tenth of that. Larsen noted, for example, that an anthrax attack in the New York subway system could cripple the city, but there are still no plans in place to decontaminate trains if such an assault were to take place. “If there were anthrax in the New York City subways, it could take decades to clean it out,” said Larsen.

The panel also gave the administration a D-plus for failing to tighten government oversight of high-contaminant labs where pathogens are stored, and Fs for failing to streamline and reform congressional oversight of homeland security and intelligence and for failing to implement programs to educate and train national-security experts who can deal with a WMD attack. But the panel gave better grades—ranging from A to C—for the response to some of its other recommendations, such as strengthening “domestic and global diseases surveillance networks,” strengthening nuclear nonproliferation programs, and creating a more efficient White House policy structure to deal with the issue.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman said the White House will respond on Tuesday.


Sources: MSNBC, Newsweek

BBC: Yemen Warns U.S. More Al-Qaida Attacks Planned...Anthrax Scare

University of New Hampshire Anthrax Scare





Western Counter-Terrorism Help Not Enough For Yemen



Yemen has said it is not getting enough support from the West to tackle al-Qaeda, as details emerge of the suspected US jet bomber's time there.

Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi told the BBC that Yemen had the will and ability to deal with al-Qaeda, but was undermined by a lack of support.

He estimated that several hundred al-Qaeda members were operating in Yemen and could be planning more attacks.

A Yemen-based branch of the network has claimed it planned the failed attack.

Yemeni officials said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up the Detroit-bound jet on Christmas Day, was living in Yemen from August until the beginning of December, the official Saba news agency reported.

US officials are said to be concerned there may be more al-Qaeda-trained young men in the country planning to bring down US planes.

In recent weeks, Yemen has launched several major operations against al-Qaeda with US backing, amid fears the troubled country is becoming a major training centre for militants.

Exaggerated Danger

In an interview for BBC Radio 4's World at One programme, Mr al-Qirbi said the conflict with al-Qaeda was a priority for his government despite wars with Shia rebels in the north and with separatists in the south.

Yemen was getting some support in this conflict but it was inadequate, he added.

"We need more training. We have to expand our counter terrorism units and this means providing them with the necessary training, military equipment, ways of transportation - we are very short of helicopters.

"The United States can do a lot, Britain can do a lot, the European Union can do a lot in that regard," he said.

He said he thought that 200-300 al-Qaeda members were operating in Yemen, but that this was just a rough guess.

"Of course there are a number in Yemen and they may actually plan for attacks as in Detroit," he said.

But Mr al-Qirbi said warnings about the situation made by US officials like Gen David Petraeus, head of Central Command, were overstated and "exaggerated in some media".

Guantanamo Link

Mr Abdulmutallab has been charged with attempting to blow up the Northwest Airlines Airbus A330 from Amsterdam, which had nearly 300 people on board, as it made its final descent into Detroit on Friday.

The 23-year-old, who is being held at a federal prison in the US state of Michigan, was restrained by passengers and crew while allegedly trying to detonate a high-explosive device sewn inside his underwear.

He has reportedly told FBI investigators that al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen had supplied him with the bomb and that there were others like him who would strike soon. His family says it lost contact with him in October.

On Monday a web posting by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including a photograph purportedly of Mr Abdulmutallab in front of its banner, said the attack had been a response to US attacks against its operatives.

On Tuesday, an official at the Yemeni foreign ministry said that the Migration and Passport Authority had confirmed that Mr Abdulmutallab arrived in Yemen at the beginning of August to study at the Sanaa Institute for the Arabic Language (SIAL) and left for Ethiopia four months later.

ABC News earlier reported that among the group who planned the alleged attack were two men who were released by the US from its Guantanamo Bay detention centre in November 2007.

Mohammed Atiq al-Harbi, also known as Mohammed al-Awfi, and Said Ali al-Shihri were sent home to Saudi Arabia, where they were admitted to an "art therapy rehabilitation program" and later set free, US and Saudi officials said.

Both men appeared in a video in January along with the man described as the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasser Abdul Karim al-Wuhayshi.





Woman Contracts Anthrax Near UNH


A New Hampshire woman is in critical condition after contracting a deadly form of bacterial Anthrax.

Doctors believe the woman, from Strafford County, came into contact with the bacteria at a drum club just off of the University of New Hampshire campus Durham. They are now searching for the source.

Hazmat teams spent all morning collecting samples from the United Campus Ministry, near the campus. That's just one of the places health officials now believe the woman was infected with a natural form of gastrointestinal anthrax.

“You find it everywhere you have animals, where you have cows,” said Dr. Jose Montero, N.H.’s public health director.

He says the bacteria rarely transmit to people. In past cases, the anthrax was ingested from the hide of an African drum.

“It can be beaten out of the hide. You can breath it, you can eat it. It's unlikely and that's one of the things that we need to investigate and figure out,” he said.

“[The bacteria are] so small they can be aerosolized. They can go into the mouth and someone can be so unlucky to swallow them,” said Elizabeth Talbot, from the department of health and human services.

This woman was in African drum circles and had been to several events held at the campus ministry in the last sixty days.

“It’s one of the links. We are not saying that the drums are the source. We have to investigate all our leads and investigate theory,” said Talbot.

The patient is not affiliated with UNH.

The chance of exposure is small and the bacteria are not contagious, but it is deadly in about 60 percent of the cases.

Anyone who owns an African drum, or thinks they may have come into contact with the United Campus Ministries in Durham, is asked to contact the New Hampshire Department of Public Health.



View Larger Map


Sources: BBC, My Fox Boston, Google Maps