Government Executive - Authors - Jon Fox

GAO lashes U.S. effort to employ Russian weapons scientists

Jon Fox — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Also, about 15 percent of the scientists involved in the cases GAO auditors looked at were born in 1970 or later, making them too young to have had a hand in Soviet-era WMD efforts.

"This is contrary to the original intent of the program, which was to reduce the proliferation risk posed by Soviet-era weapons scientists," government auditors wrote in the report (GAO-08-189).

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was a growing concern that indigent but experienced former Soviet scientists could spread the knowledge necessary for nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs.

To mitigate potential proliferation risks, the Energy Department in 1994 established the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention to engage former Soviet scientists in nonmilitary work in the short term and in the longer term create sustainable private sector employment.

More than a decade later, however, the GAO report calls for the Energy Department to seriously re-evaluate the program and come up with a strategy to discontinue the efforts.

"DOE has not developed an exit strategy for the IPP program, even though officials from the Russian government, Russian and Ukrainian institutes, and U.S. companies raised questions about the continuing need for the program," government auditors write.

One senior Russian atomic official told GAO investigators that his nation's reinvigorated economy has pushed the program into irrelevance and that scientists there no longer pose a proliferation risk.

In fiscal 2007, Congress appropriated $28 million for the program. "Due to the serious nature of these finding, we recommend that DOE perform a comprehensive reassessment of the IPP program to help Congress determine whether to continue to fund the program," auditors wrote.

While agreeing with a number of the GAO recommendations, such as the call for more rigorous documentation to establish scientists' WMD background and better ways to measure the number of private sector jobs created, the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration disagreed with the report's overall conclusion.

The administration, which oversees the programs, disputes the final GAO recommendation that the necessity of the program be reassessed, its associate administrator wrote in a letter drafted in response to the report.

As of April 2007, the Energy Department claimed to have engaged nearly 17,000 scientists in Russia and other countries, but the Government Accountability Office report points out that this includes both those with and without weapons-related experience.

In its analysis of 97 IPP projects involving roughly 6,500 scientists, auditors concluded that more than half did not claim to have any specific weapons-related background. Those scientists received 40 percent, or about $10 million, of funding for those projects.

Officials from 10 Russian and Ukrainian scientific institutes said the U.S. funding helps them attract and retain younger scientists who would have otherwise emigrated to the United States or western European nations, the Government Accountability Office reported.

Representative John Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told the Associated Press that the "GAO has raised troubling questions about whether a nonproliferation program has perversely funded a younger generation of (Russian) weapons scientists."

The Energy Department claims to have created more than 2,700 long-term private sector jobs, but those accomplishments also have been overstated, government auditors concluded. The figure is uncertain because the agency relies on "good-faith reporting form U.S. industry partners and foreign institutes" and does not independently verify the numbers, the report says.

GAO officials also found that 97 percent of the funds being spent on nonproliferation projects in Libya through May 2007 were actually being spent in domestic DOE laboratories to pay for project management and oversight. Statutory restrictions on the program limit the percentage of such spending to no more than 35 percent.

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European ports install radiation detectors as U.S. delays

Jon Fox — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Just last week, U.S. officials announced that the Homeland Security Department is slowing plans to roll out 1,400 monitors, each costing nearly $400,000, as part of a $1.2 billion multiyear project. In field tests, the new Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitors, or ASPs, "led to the determination that additional functional capacity is needed to meet the operational standards," a department spokeswoman announced.

The announcement, which means the machines could take another year to reach U.S. ports, comes after more than a year of sparring between DHS officials and the Government Accountability Office over how effective the technology is as well as testing methods used to evaluate it.

The debate over the new equipment has largely played out in congressional hearings. In September, Government Accountability Office officials argued that DHS testing was based on a "biased" methodology that allowed vendors an artificial edge during the evaluation of their radiation detectors, an allegation Homeland Security officials said was off base.

Officials at the Belgian port of Antwerp, however, are moving ahead with deployment of the ASPs for use in secondary screening.

"We're in the process of finalizing it now," Pascal Fias, a scientist working at the Antwerp port, said last week during an International Atomic Energy Agency-sponsored conference on nuclear trafficking here.

In the Netherlands, Dutch customs officials are already using the ASP detectors in secondary deployments and expect to eventually use them as primary scanners, Fias said.

Containers at ports are typically put through a two-phase scanning process. During the first phase, the shipping containers are sent through very sensitive detectors called plastic scintillators. Plastic scintillators can detect very low-level radiation emissions but are incapable of identifying the isotope emitting the energy.

Due to their sensitivity, they can be triggered by innocuous cargo with trace levels of natural radiation like granite, kitty litter or bananas. In one instance a load of blueberries set off Belgian alarms. The fruit exhibited trace levels of cesium contamination, a legacy from Chernobyl, Fias said.

If the primary detectors discover the presence of radiation, the shipping container is then sent through a secondary screening where customs officials use hand-held devices to determine the nature of the source.

After the latest round of GAO criticism of the DHS technology vetting process, Homeland Security officials suggested the ASP detectors would first be deployed in secondary locations and testing would continue before replacing the plastic scintillators.

While Belgian port officials have no plans to shift the ASP to a primary detection deployment - they say they have the plastic scintillators and might as well use them - the new technology is perfect for secondary screening, they say.

"For the second phase, it makes a lot of sense to use the ASP," Fias told Global Security Newswire, calling the technology currently "the best on the market."

Without the ASP detectors, custom officials must use a small, hand-held scanner to assess the entire shipping container. That is a small scanner and a large box, a combination that has led to complaints from customs officials at the port, Fias said.

By contrast, the ASP scanners are "basically a very, very big detector that can scan the whole of the container," he said. Replacing primary scanners with the new technology requires any new device to be at least a sensitive as the plastic scintillators, Fias notes, a more challenging bar to meet.

The goal with these detector upgrades, both domestically and abroad, is not necessarily increasing the level or radiation detection at ports, but rather smoothing the flow of commerce and making sure current detection regime is not disruptive. U.S. officials have repeatedly said the goal is to lower the number of false alarms at large ports such as Los Angeles/Long Beach. That port, the nation's busiest, has about 500 radiation alerts a day, and DHS officials suggest the new technology could plunge that number to less than 30.

"We want to have a low economic impact. Time is money, certainly in a port," Fias said of Antwerp. "Only 1 in 10,000 containers are delayed for more than a few hours or days."

He expects the ASPs, to be used in conjunction with x-ray scanning, to be rolled out in Antwerp by the end of next year.

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Lawmakers propose nuclear plant no-fly zones

Jon Fox — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0400

In a post-Sept. 11 world nuclear power reactors are seen as potential targets for terrorist attacks that could have disastrous consequences should radioactive material be released into the environment. Just 35 miles north of Manhattan, the Indian Point power facility seems to embody this concern.

As the owners of the Indian Point reactors seek renewed licenses to operate for the next three decades, New York's attorney general filed a legal brief supporting demands that federal officials in making their decision consider terrorism risks and the feasibility of evacuating the surrounding area.

Westchester County officials in New York have appealed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's refusal to alter criteria considered in relicensing power plants.

In the meantime, Democratic New York Reps. Nita Lowey, Eliot Engel, and Maurice Hinchey have sponsored a bill that could keep planes away from any nuclear power plant within 50 miles of an urban area where more than 15 million people live.

The bill would allow but not require the homeland security secretary to designate no-fly zones around nuclear plants in those regions. It does not call for a specific security circumference.

"Al-Qaeda has publicly asserted that they have considered targeting nuclear facilities, and we don't know what method that would be," said Lowey spokesman Matt Dennis. "That just poses an unacceptable risk."

Dennis noted that one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, flew over the Indian Point site.

According to the Sept. 11 commission report, original al-Qaeda plans for the 2001 attacks included a total of 10 planes with nuclear power plants in the set of targets.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, however, is not particularly concerned about a scenario in which a plane strikes a reactor. "These are naturally robust facilities that are meant to withstand many types of natural disasters," said spokeswoman Holly Harrington. "Studies have shown that there's a low likelihood that it would penetrate to the extent that it would be a public safety hazard."

Dennis said that argument is less than convincing. "These facilities were not built to withstand that and we can't know for sure," he said.

While there are presently no no-fly zones, the Federal Aviation Administration has issued a notice for pilots "that basically tells them not to linger around nuclear power plants," Harrington said.

If a plane or helicopter were perceived as a threat to a power plant, military jets could be scrambled. "We do have a lot of close communication with NORAD," she said, referring to the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Given the location of some power plants, a no-fly zone could be "highly disruptive" to air traffic, she added.

The New York lawmakers' legislation has been referred to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Even if approved in Congress and signed by the president, it seems unlikely to be used by the Homeland Security Department.

"The department has done an extraordinary amount of work with the various entities that regulate nuclear facilities," said agency spokesman Russ Knocke, indicating that the department is satisfied with the current security measures. "We've struck the right the balance in risk management of high consequence sites."

Since 2001, plans to protect commercial nuclear reactors have incorporated expanded threat scenarios with a greater number of terrorists attacking by land or possibly over water. The commission rejected a suggested requirement that private reactor security forces be prepared to defend against armor piercing ammunition and rocket-propelled grenades. The guidelines do not require facilities to prepare for an air attack.

In April, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposed a rule that companies apply to certify new nuclear reactor designs assess what the impact of a commercial airplane striking the structure would be.

At research reactors, where there is often highly enriched uranium that could be weapons usable, federal official have issued rules requiring additional fingerprinting and background checks of those with access to the facilities.

Regarding threats posed by aircraft, it is "important to not lose sight of the effort that's been made to harden our aviation sector since 9/11," Knocke said. "There are extraordinary layers of security in the aviation sector that have been put in place."

Knocke would not comment specifically on no-fly zones surrounding nuclear reactors.

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DHS aims to spur innovation in radiation detection

Jon Fox — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0400

"That was considered sort of ho-hum," said Ferguson, a physicist and now a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. "There wasn't really a strong motivation for talented young scientists to study these subjects."

Following Sept. 11, 2001, however, detecting radiation took on a new immediacy. Radiation detectors were no longer needed just to stop contaminated scrap metal from ruining industrial processing equipment or making sure nothing radioactive from inside a nuclear power plant ended up outside.

As the United States recovered from spectacular strikes against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, concerns grew about what could be the most devastating terrorism scenario -- detonation of a stolen or improvised nuclear weapon. Radiation detection technology would likely play an integral role in catching a nuclear weapon or nuclear material before it could be used in such an attack.

The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office was created two years ago within the Homeland Security Department, which was itself formed in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Part of its mission, in addition to developing a web of radiation detection to safeguard the United States from a smuggled nuclear weapon, is pushing forward detection technology through "an aggressive … and transformational" program of research and development.

To a certain extent, however, the mental capital to develop that technology was lacking. People were not paying attention to this challenge, at least not in the way that the post-Sept. 11 world seemed to demand.

"People had been concerned at the national labs about monitoring special nuclear material, but it wasn't until terrorism reared its ugly head that people began to get concerned about the ultimate terrorist attack, which is a loose nuke," said David Wehe, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Michigan who studies radiation detection. "We need the intellectual horsepower to come along and solve these things," he said.

Detecting radioactive scrap metal is one thing but detecting the low activity nuclear material that could fuel fission weapons is something else altogether.

"That's a huge challenge," Wehe said, noting the materials do not produce much of a radioactive signature. "I don't know if you were ever on a nuclear submarine but people sleep next to these things. A nuclear-tipped torpedo could be on the bunk above you."

Since the devastating twin blows to nuclear power of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and later the end of a Cold War focus on nuclear one-upmanship, there has been a decline in both the number of nuclear engineering departments and nuclear engineering students in the United States, said William Hagan, assistant director of transformation research and development at the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office.

"That has led of course to fewer students going into the field, fewer students graduating and therefore fewer people available in general," he said during a recent interview.

Nearly six years later after Sept. 11, that gap is still outstanding.

"We didn't have the huge group of people we felt we needed right after Sept. 11 to really pay attention to these issues, so even six years after Sept. 11 we still have this lag," Ferguson said.

Now the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office is doing what it can to address that lag, by providing $58 million over five years to academic institutions digging into the problems of radiation detection.

Jump-Starting Academia

The Academic Research Initiative, designed with input from the academic community it is aimed to invigorate, is being run jointly by the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office and the National Science Foundation. The recipients of the first grants have already been selected but not yet publicly identified.

In fiscal 2007, the first year of the program, Hagan's office plans to hand out roughly $8 million to fund research programs that would operate from three to five years. The largest research programs could take up to five years and receive up to $7.5 million over their spans.

The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office is looking for universities to work on detecting shielded material, detecting material at greater distances, miniaturizing detectors as well as more effectively analyzing the data streaming back from the devices.

"We've got to deal with this sort of languishing of technology that has happened over the past couple of decades," Hagan said. "I think we're already starting to snap out of that."

While Hagan's office tries to spread its attention over the three constituencies that make up the research community -- the national laboratories, private industry and the universities -- the academic community offers particular opportunities for innovation, he said.

Universities can be the places where outlandish and unlikely solutions to problems can emerge, solutions that might not come to fruition in a more conservative, profit-minded industrial atmosphere or in the national laboratories.

The idea with the Academic Research Initiative "was we want this to be very unrestrictive," Hagan said. "We want this to be very innovative. We want this to be things that a company may not think of because it's too far out."

Hagan is hoping the program results in some unconventional thinking that provides the next step forward in technology. Even if it does not, it would hopefully produce graduates "intellectually engaged and familiar with the kinds of problems and the technologies that are relevant to our mission," he said. "It takes a while to get going, to get some momentum."

Moving Forward

"They're stuck," said Richard Lanza, a senior research scientist in the nuclear science and engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Most of the detectors that we're using are stuff that was around 20 years ago," Lanza said. The science of radiation detection has not been moving forward in leaps and bounds, he said, suggesting need for a "longer-term look at the fundamentals."

Even the new Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitors, which the Homeland Security Department is pushing to deploy at the cost of more than $1 billion, use older detection materials such as sodium iodide and germanium, said Wehe, the Michigan nuclear scientist.

"There's no breakthrough there in terms of material of science," he said.

The new monitors analyze signals more effectively to pinpoint what isotopes the detectors are detecting, but the basic science behind the device is nothing new. Significantly transforming the technology and science used to detect radiation sources will take a tremendous effort, Wehe said.

Bright students are looking for just such a challenge, he said. "I think what young people are looking for is an interesting technical question. The fact that the application is homeland security is a good thing."

To hear Wehe tell it, the challenge of radiation detection is so significant that the solutions might come from far left field.

"I've been at workshops where people are looking at crazy things like training honey bees to hunt for special nuclear materials," he said.

This was not a science fiction conference either. There were serious scientists there from national laboratories and federal agencies. "It was called informally the out of the box conference, but most of us were calling it the out of your mind conference," he said.

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Coast Guard considering drones to watch long coastlines

Jon Fox — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0400

The planes would be able to linger over stretches of coast and improve the tracking of small vessels under 300 gross tons that are largely below the threshold of Coast Guard attention, Rear Adm. Brian Salerno said at a breakfast meeting held by the National Defense University Foundation.

Salerno did not offer any details of what a drone-based surveillance and detection network might look like or how exactly the planes would be deployed.

The United States has 95,000 miles of coast line that is essentially an international border, Salerno said. That border, however, is not protected equally. Security is relatively robust at the nation's larger ports, but remains "spotty" along other coastal areas, he said.

Vessels weighing more than 300 gross tons are covered by an electronic tracking system that relays location information when they are in U.S. ports. An international agreement calls for the same system to enable tracking of those ships at longer ranges off national coasts by the end of 2008.

The 8,000 smaller foreign vessels that make about 60,000 U.S. port calls a year, as well as the 17 million recreational boats in the United States, come and go largely unseen unless an aircraft or Coast Guard boat happens to be in the vicinity, Salerno said.

"What we do not have is full coverage," he said. "We have very spotty coverage as far as ships that are operating along our coasts that are below the [300-ton] threshold."

Such vessels could carry nuclear substances or other dangerous material, transport terrorists seeking to enter the United States, or even be used as weapons themselves as in the 2000 suicide bombing against the USS Cole, Salerno said.

The "visibility" of small vessels is not adequate, he said. "We have some maritime domain awareness gaps. There are some things we don't see," Salerno said. "If it's occurring outside a port area we probably won't see it."

Salerno's comments come a few weeks after Vayl Oxford, head of the Homeland Security Department's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, said his agency was planning a shift away from a port-centric attention to maritime shipping containers.

In terms of a possible avenue for terrorists to deliver a nuclear or radiological device to U.S. soil, small seagoing vessels and small general-aviation aircraft represent a concern and will become a growing focus, he said.

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DHS official pushes launch of new nuclear detectors

Jon Fox — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

The detection office, a division within the Homeland Security Department, is about halfway through a test run of new radiation detection technology at the New York Container Terminal in Staten Island.

The equipment scans seagoing containers to detect and identify radioactive material. The detectors have already undergone testing at the Energy Department's Nevada Test Site.

While DNDO Director Vayl Oxford declined to describe the results of the February and March tests in any detail, he characterized the results as positive.

"We are very optimistic that when we go to [Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff] this summer he will give us permission to go to production," Oxford said Wednesday during a tour of the Staten Island testing facility.

Detectors now deployed at the nation's ports and border crossings are adapted from technology used to detect radioactive material at scrap yards and other industrial sites. While reportedly very sensitive, they only alert to the presence of radiation and are unable to differentiate different types of radioactive substances.

That can become a problem when the machines alert to the naturally occurring radiation in materials such as granite, kitty litter or bananas. A container flagged for radiation must undergo a secondary screening process to identify the emitting material, which can take up to 20 minutes.

Port officials say there are 12 to 14 such alerts each day at the Staten Island facility, which handles 11 percent of the cargo flowing into the port of New York. At California's Long Beach port, Customs and Border Protection officials deal with as many as 400 such cases daily.

"We've got to make their life better," Oxford said.

The new detectors carry a hefty price tag of $350,000 per unit, a significant increase over the $80,000 the current machines cost.

Both the Government Accountability Office and Congress have questioned the benefits of the new system relative to the cost, and lawmakers have put a hold on a $1.2 billion plan for deployment of 1,400 machines until DHS can confirm that the technology is effective.

Three firms have each received about $15 million to develop competing prototypes of the new detectors, and despite congressional doubts Oxford expects to go to Chertoff with a recommendation for full-scale production in July.

By decreasing the number of necessary secondary inspections to a "mere fraction" of what is currently required, "we're going to be able to manage both the risk and the flow of commerce with these systems," Oxford said.

Oxford said the detection office plans to run about 10,000 containers through the test array at the Staten Island terminal. Three weeks into the testing, DNDO officials have put about 5,000 containers through the system. Once the data is complete, they will then analyze the accuracy of the identification of radioactive material.

A GAO report released Monday said Oxford's office should systematically compile test data on the existing monitors to fully understand their benefits and limitations before making the multibillion dollar investment the deployment plan requires.

The report also recommends the office provide state and local authorities with information on radiation detection technologies to help them make more informed purchasing decisions.

"We strongly agree with this statement, as the DNDO feels that bolstering preventive [radiological and nuclear] detection capabilities within the domestic interior is an essential part of our nation's defense," the detection office wrote in response.

Regarding the recommendation to compile testing data, Oxford said, "That's a prudent thing to do."

He added, however, that "some of that test data we've already looked at, and I'm not sure it's relevant to the decision we're making." Even as the office works to enhance the nuclear detection network at the nation's borders and ports, DNDO officials are enlisting help from outside experts and the intelligence community to probe gaps in the system.

In some cases, that includes testing the systems and detectors by having people trying to smuggle real nuclear material. Tests with mock terrorists have already begun, said Huban Gowadia, the detection office's assistant director for assessment.

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DHS seeks help investigating nuclear detection gaps

Jon Fox — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0400

The assessment would take place even as the United States continues to develop its radiation detection systems and looks to invest more than $1 billion in next-generation detectors.

The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, a division within DHS, is hoping that by employing independent experts it can garner a glimpse of the current nuclear and radiological detection approach from a terrorist's perspective, according to a description of the plan posted to a government Web site last week.

These "Red Teaming Assessments" would be based solely on publicly available information in order to identify vulnerabilities a terrorist group might be able to locate with the same data.

The government's concern, which has grown astronomically since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is that a group or individual could smuggle either radiological or nuclear material into the United States for use in a "dirty bomb" or an improvised atomic weapon. The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, just more than 2 years old, was launched to specifically counter this threat.

"The goal is to identify vulnerabilities in the technology and operational procedures and to identify sensitive open-source information that, while unclassified, would prove useful to anyone attempting to circumvent the global nuclear detection architecture," according to the program description.

DHS is currently scanning 90 percent of inbound sea cargo at U.S. ports for radiation. The department expects that number to reach 98 percent for cargo at major domestic ports by the end of 2007. By 2008, nearly all containers at U.S. ports are set to be scanned for radiation, DHS officials have said. Radiation detectors are also being deployed at major land border crossings into the United States.

Industry, academic and government experts would study existing gaps in nuclear detection and those that could arise as the system develops, according to the detection office's request for input. They would be able to supplement data gleaned from open-source documents with "surveillance, site penetration" and any other information they might be able to independently elicit.

The efforts would result in both annual assessments and shorter-term studies that would gauge potential vulnerabilities and suggest fixes on a quarterly basis.

The nuclear detection office is asking experts over the next month provide suggestions on the structure of such a study group and the technological backgrounds of its members.

The DHS is also asking for input on ways the experts in the group could collect information, conduct surveillance and probe the security at sites legally and safely. Such activities could include simulated smuggling or actual transport of radiological or nuclear material, according to the DHS description of the planned program.

Unofficial tests of the system have shown weaknesses in the past. In 2002 and again in 2003, ABC News packed 15 pounds of depleted uranium into a lead pipe and shipped it via sea container into the United States to test U.S. detection capabilities.

In effect, study group members might be asked to play terrorist, probing for information and physically testing the U.S. detection web. Homeland Security officials are looking for an "accurate emulation of potential threat actors, their likely source materials and courses of action," according to the DHS posting.

Red teaming, or employing government outsiders to play the role of adversaries, is a fairly regular exercise employed by U.S. agencies, said nuclear security expert Charles Ferguson, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Several years ago, Ferguson was part of a red team that was called to consider how a terrorist group might launch a dirty bomb attack. During that exercise the government also tapped the imagination of author Brad Meltzer, a writer of popular thrillers set in Washington.

"I think it's a valuable exercise," Ferguson said. "It's a way to bring in outside experts and just poke holes in what the government is trying to do."

Jeffrey Lewis, director of the New America Foundation's Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative, disagrees, suggesting they are likely an ineffective way to predict real adversary responses.

"I just don't see any reason to assume that terrorists laboring under real operational constraints would reach the same conclusions as a predominantly white, male, sixty-something, upper-middle class panel dominated by Ivy League graduates chatting over pastries and coffee," said Lewis via e-mail. "Many of these individuals are brilliant, but none of them are terrorists."

The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office is testing three versions of a next-generation radiation detector that it hopes would be able to detect radiation and to identify the emitting isotope as harmless and naturally occurring or a material of concern such as highly enriched uranium.

Present detectors do not distinguish between radiation-emitting materials, requiring Customs and Border Protection officials to conduct secondary screenings with a handheld scanner to determine the source of the alert.

Lawmakers have questioned whether the new machines, which carry a total price tag of $1.2 billion, would serve to better protect the nation's borders. Funding has been put on hold until the detector's increased efficacy can be certified by DHS.

DHS officials say the next-generation technology would still be unable to detect shielded highly enriched uranium, what experts say would likely be the nuclear material of choice for a terror group trying to assemble a simple nuclear device. Highly enriched uranium emits a relatively weak nuclear signature.

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DHS considers nuclear detector tests in New York

Jon Fox — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Following approval to begin testing at the New York Container Terminal on Staten Island, the portal machines would be put in place for about four weeks -- enough time to send 10,000 shipping containers through them, said Vayl Oxford, head of Homeland Security's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office. The new technology would operate alongside the current detectors and DHS officials would evaluate the rate of false alarms.

Even as the detection office prepares to put the new machines through real-world paces, doubts persist in Congress about the value of the new technology.

Congress has blocked any additional funding for the new detectors until the homeland security secretary could assure Congress of the efficacy of the detectors. It is all part of a push and pull the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office is in the middle of on Capitol Hill, Oxford said.

"We find ourselves in an interesting tug of war," he told reporters. "There's this 'Do it faster.' And in the other case 'Slow down and make sure you do it right.'"

The Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitors are designed to detect radiation and identify the source material. That would allow screeners to determine if the radiation source is the potassium in a shipment of bananas or the radiation emitted by a material of concern such as uranium or plutonium. The large number of secondary inspections currently required would be reduced, Oxford said.

The technology presently in place throws up the same red flag for all radiation regardless if it comes from natural sources or a radiological "dirty bomb." Discriminating between the two requires secondary screening with handheld detectors.

Lawmakers and the Government Accountability Office, however, have questioned the $377,000 price tag for each machine, which is more than four times the cost Homeland Security cites for the cargo screeners now in use. There are plans to spend $1.2 billion on the new detectors.

"DNDO's cost-benefit analysis does not provide a sound analytical basis for its decision to purchase and deploy the new portal monitors," Gene Aloise, a GAO expert on nuclear issues, told a House Homeland Security technology subcommittee Wednesday. "The data used in the analysis was incomplete and unreliable, and as a result we do not have any confidence in it."

Aloise said the detection office assumed the portals would identify highly enriched uranium 95 percent of the time, when in reality the number was much lower. Tests conducted in 2005 indicated the three types of radiation monitors selected could only correctly identify highly enriched uranium about half the time.

DHS analysis also used skewed data on the current technology's performance that made the second-generation machine look better by comparison, he said.

"We're a fact-based organization, and we believe cost-benefit analyses ought to be based on fact," Aloise told the committee.

Oxford said that 95 percent is an ideal goal for HEU identification. He expressed confidence that the next-generation screeners would reduce false alarms and alleviate pressure on Customs and Border Protection agents forced to conduct secondary inspections to determine sources of radiation.

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Legislators propose measure to speed up biodefense program

Jon Fox — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0500

The bill, introduced in the House this week, is an attempt to address the lagging pace of Project Bioshield, a federal effort that has delivered little since it was launched nearly three years ago.

Designed to create an incentive for private enterprise to develop biological countermeasures to unconventional weapons, Bioshield dangles cash in front of biotech firms but gives no money until a product is delivered.

Officials at the helm of the $5.6 million program have spent less than 25 percent of their budget, and late last year the Health and Human Services Department abandoned a $1 billion contract with a California company to provide 75 million doses of an anthrax vaccine.

President Bush announced the Bioshield program during his State of the Union address in 2004, indicating the initiative would counter threats such as the plague and Ebola. To date, however, the program has done little to address these potential biological agents.

Bioshield's limited progress has attracted the attention of representatives on the House Homeland Security Committee who have highlighted the program as a focus for oversight and hearings this year.

"I'd just say I'm very concerned with some of the recent problems that have come to light with respect to the Bioshield project," Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I., said earlier this month. "For example, we all recently heard about the cancellation of VaxGen's contract for a next generation anthrax vaccine and, at the time, this was the only major procurement contract under BioShield."

Langevin, chairman of the homeland security subcommittee covering emerging threats, is a cosponsor of the new legislation.

Under the current program, the Homeland Security Department first identifies and assesses threats and countermeasures. Once that is completed, the Health and Human Services Department then selects firms to develop specific countermeasures.

The recently introduced bill is designed to accelerate the threat-assessment process. To the extent possible, the Homeland Security Department will be required to clump possible countermeasures into groups that might be able to address more than one chemical, biological or radiological agent.

"Rather than examining each threat individually, we should be looking for ways to properly group these threats together," Langevin said this week. "This legislation will promote a more strategic use of our nation's resources when procuring medical countermeasures."

The bill would also require that homeland security assessments of the most high-risk agents be completed by the end of 2007.

"Effective medical countermeasures for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear agents are a critical part of our nation's defense against terrorism, yet very few exist," said Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, a member of the homeland security subcommittee for emerging threats.

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Auditor cites progress resolving flaws in Biowatch program

Jon Fox — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Released Wednesday, the report by the Homeland Security Inspector General's Office described a number of problems with the Biowatch monitoring network that could have undermined its ability to detect biological agents and "protect the populace of the United States."

Launched in 2003, the federal program installed detectors in urban areas to test for roughly 20 pathogens that might be released by terrorists. The list of the cities in which equipment has been deployed has not been released, but New York and Washington are believed to be included.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the anthrax mailings that followed, terrorism exports warned of the serious potential for a major biological attack. Analysts continue to caution that a strike could cause as many casualties as an act of nuclear terrorism.

Homeland Security rolled out Biowatch in just 80 days between late January and mid-April 2003. By 2004, however, an evaluation uncovered faulty techniques and mistakes in taking the air filters from the field to laboratories for analysis.

Filters were improperly transferred, the bags they were transported in were not decontaminated, procedural errors were made and quality control was lacking, the inspector general found. In 2005, laboratories received an even lower grade in a second round of evaluations.

"DHS identified areas for improvement in the operation of the program but did not follow up on these areas," according to the report.

The inspector general also found deficiencies in the cooperation between the Homeland Security Department and the other agencies involved in the monitoring program, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"DHS did not enforce the required submission of monthly and quarterly status reports … which would have enabled it to properly monitor its federal partners," auditors wrote. Lax management controls over the program opens it up to mismanagement of funds, they said.

Action has been taken to fix the issues, according to the report, although no specifics were given.

"We consider all recommendations resolved and closed," the report's authors wrote.

Still, the House Homeland Security Committee plans to revisit the program this year, Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said late last month.

Lawmakers, he said, want to take a look at the "very low-key" program to see if it has "has any success at all."

In October 2003, shortly after the program's launch, detectors in Houston detected airborne evidence of the bacteria that causes tularemia, but analysis later determined that the results were due to a naturally occurring bacteria and not a malicious act. There have been 15 such positives later attributed to natural causes, according to Homeland Security.

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New DHS disaster preparedness ads play down terrorism

Jon Fox — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:00:00 -0500

However, the new public service announcements never mention terrorism as they direct viewers to the government disaster preparedness Web site Ready.gov.

While the Web site's focus was explicitly on terrorism when it was launched in 2003, Homeland Security officials said the agency is now moving toward an "all hazards" campaign.

The new ads feature families realizing during a documentary-style interview that they are generally unprepared to deal with an emergency situation. They stumble into that realization with a smile, seemingly bemused at their own failure to think about preparedness. Each commercial is set to the same jaunty, slightly folksy guitar tune.

The televisions spots, produced free of charge by the New York firm BBDO along with the Advertising Council, are a stark contrast to a more alarmist tack taken in the past.

An older Spanish language commercial, still featured on the Ad Council Web site, is much darker in tone and focused directly on terrorism. Its approach echoes the rhetoric used by former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge when he announced the Ready.gov campaign in 2003.

He appeared on CNN to warn Americans of the unpredictable nature of terrorism and to remind them to make an emergency kit that included duct tape and premeasured plastic sheeting to create a home shelter from chemical weapons.

"The next attack could happen to any community at any time," Ridge said then. "Terrorists force us to make a choice: We can be afraid or we can be ready. American's aren't afraid, and we will be ready."

In the Spanish-language public service announcement two angels -- an element the Homeland Security Department said was specific to the Spanish ads because research showed "it's something that would appeal to Hispanics" -- look out over a darkened city from a high hillside.

"They can't see the threat, so they don't feel the danger," the first angel says, going on to remind the second angel that "the crab that is not aware of the tide is swept out to sea."

An announcer then tells viewers in Spanish: "Even if you don't think about it, the possibility of a terrorist attack is real. Are you ready?"

The older commercials for Ready.gov were "more terrorism-focused," said Homeland Security spokeswoman Joanna Gonzalez. The Spanish-language advertisements, like their English-language counterparts, are being redone, she said.

The new concepts are part of a long look at what is needed to actually persuade Americans to plan for the emergencies, including terrorism: "What do we need in an advertisement to get someone to actually act?" Gonzalez said. "You need a motivator. These ads have real families."

Along with the commercials, the Web site itself has changed drastically. In 2003, the main page of the site declared "Terrorism forces us to make a choice. … Don't be afraid. Be ready." There are links to information about what might happen in the event of biological, chemical, nuclear and radiological attacks.

In the Web site's most recent iteration in 2006, the word terrorism does not appear on the site's home page. Instead, a smiling family sits on their porch. Families are advised to "Prepare. Plan. Stay informed."

Information about what to do in the event of fires, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes has been added the tips about what to do in the event of WMD attacks.

Michael Stebbins, a scientist with the Federation of American Scientists, applauded the shift. His organization has been critical of Ready.gov in the past, and even created an alternative site called ReallyReady.org that the group says has more complete information on preparedness.

"I think the move away from terrorism probably reflects the fact that it's not resonating as well anymore and people don't want to be scared anymore," Stebbins said. "It's better to reach out and appeal to them on a different level."

"Talking about terrorism events specifically only scares somebody and it actually misses the point," he said, adding that the real goal is spurring someone to devise an emergency plan.

The new ads went out to television stations in mid-November, but it is impossible to know yet when they are going to be televised, said Ellyn Fisher, an Ad Council spokeswoman. The Ready.gov site has registered more than 1.7 billion hits since it was launched.

A survey in February 2004 found that the percentage of parents who stock emergency supplies had increased from 28 percent to 40 percent since the beginning of the campaign. The number of families that had created an emergency plan had increased from 17 to 27 percent.

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CBO: Missile defense spending to peak in 2016 at $15 billion

Jon Fox — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The government has spent billions on a missile shield designed to protect the United States and its allies from the threat of ballistic missiles, but the program has yet to create an operational defense, critics say.

Missile defense programs have a mixed record in testing; in September, a target missile in an intercept drill had to be destroyed shortly after launching.

The most advanced components of the system "may" rather than "should" have some defensive capability against a limited attack, Defense Department Operational Test and Evaluation Director David Duma stated in January.

Defense officials, though, have continued to express their belief in the system's ability to bring down an ICBM. Asked in June how much faith he put in the system, Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering said, "In my mind it's a much higher confidence than what has been described by our critics."

Funding for the program remains robust and the budget office expects it to reach its highest level in 2016 as a number of defense systems move through the procurement phase and begin to be deployed. Annual costs would then decline to about $8 billion in 2024, the office expects.

The peak comes roughly three years later than the date projected by budget analysts in a 2005 report, due to delays a number of major projects. The budget office analysis does not detail the nature of those delays.

In preparing its report, the Congressional Budget Office examined current Pentagon plans for missile defenses as well as policy statements from the White House. Virginia Samson, a missile defense analyst with the Center for Defense Information, called the analysis a valuable peek into the future of U.S. missile defenses.

The Missile Defense Agency faces different reporting requirements than other military agencies regarding its budget requests and details of its programs remain relatively murky, Samson said. "I think it's one of the better things that we have," she said of the budget projections released last month.

The funding for the missile defense program has been set by Congress at $9.4 billion for fiscal 2007. The analysis by the budget office, however, does not provide precise yearly estimates going forward, nor does it provide a precise breakdown of estimated funding for each missile defense program.

Due to the spiral nature of the missile defense development -- programs are rolled out even as they continue to be developed to create an interim defense capability -- requirements for program details are loosened for missile defense, Samson said. "For whatever reason missile defense is thought to be in such a special category that it can do that type of thing," she said.

That makes projecting costs years in advance very difficult, Samson said. "It just makes oversight very hard."

The president's fiscal 2007 budget request and the Defense Department's Future Years Defense Program report propose funding averaging $10 billion annually for continued research and development of an overall missile defense system through 2024.

Another $500 million annually would go toward systems designed to intercept missiles toward their end of their flights, such as Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missile interceptors.

The projected spending would fund research, development and testing of antimissile systems designed to counter ballistic missiles in all phases of flight -- shortly after they are launched, in midflight and as they re-enter the atmosphere.

According to the CBO analysis, an expanded deployment of the U.S. Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system will be completed in 2013, but the government will continue to purchase additional missile interceptors through 2017. Total cost for work on the system through 2017 is estimated at $18 billion.

The office also expects the Defense Department to develop and deploy "a constellation of space-based infrared sensor satellites." Such satellites would be able to detect and track ballistic missiles in flight beginning shortly after their launch. That data would then be relayed back to interceptors launched to destroy the warheads.

The Defense Department's initial plans include a constellation of 24 to 27 satellites, but the budget office interprets current plans as calling for the launch of a five-satellite group in 2014. In 2017, more satellites would be launched, bringing the total up to nine, according to the budget office, which anticipates the total cost for the two groups to be $7 billion.

For terminal-phase defenses, including the PAC-3 short-range missile defense systems, Medium Extended Air-Defense System and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, the budget office researchers estimate annual funding of about $2 billion a year through 2024.

The Pentagon is also expected to spend $500 million in fiscal 2008 for the Space Test Bed to support research for boost-phase interceptors in space, according to budget office researchers.

Information on the Space Test Bed is thin, but the fact that the Missile Defense Agency is going to seek funding as soon as 2008 to place weapon-related items in space is significant, Samson said. As to what exactly the plans entail, "we can only hazard a guess at this point," she said.

To begin the weaponization of space "would be a huge change in policy for the United States," Samson said.

In June, both Russia and China told the U.N. Conference on Disarmament that the threat of space-based weapons could be equal to that posed by weapons of mass destruction.

A State Department official, however, asserted U.S. rights to develop space-based weapons. John Mohanco, State Department deputy director for multilateral, nuclear and security affairs, told the Conference on Disarmament that space weapons could help safeguard military and commercial satellites.

Washington, he said, would oppose any international efforts restricting its plans. "As long as the potential for such attacks remains, our government will continue to consider the possible role that space-related weapons may play in protecting our assets," he said.

Still, he added that "for our part, the United States does not have any weapons in space, nor do we have plans to build such weapons."

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Group modifies preparedness Web site after DHS complains

Jon Fox — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Homeland Security claimed the use of the logo and design from its Web site, Ready.gov, by the federation for its site, ReallyReady.org, constituted theft of intellectual property.

An intern at the organization spent her summer developing an alternate version of the government site -- one which the federation said contained more useful information and corrected deficiencies found in the Homeland Security site. She also wrote a lengthy critique of the DHS site.

The work did not go unnoticed by the media, appearing in the Washington Post and elsewhere. Then came the letter from the government.

The new site infringed on the department's intellectual property, according to a DHS lawyer. The sites just look too similar, the government claimed.

"This will cause substantial confusion to the public and, in our estimation, already has confused the public given the press coverage of your Web site," the lawyer wrote.

The main bones of contention were the color scheme, the check-mark logo and the wording on ReallyReady.org, all of which originally approximated the government's Web site. Homeland Security asked that they stop using the designs.

"We changed the color of the checkmark and put a box around it so it clearly looked different," said federation biology policy director Michael Stebbins, author of the organization's response to the government.

The federation rejected Homeland Security's complaint -- "We do not believe there is anything novel in the use of a green checkmark over the word ready," Stebbins wrote in a response to the agency -- but slightly changed the site's design anyway.

"We didn't want bad blood between us and the Department of Homeland Security," Stebbins said. Still, he called the government's response to the site "somewhat petty."

"I don't think anyone was confused about the site as the department has claimed," Stebbins said.

Intern Emily Hesaltine's analysis of Ready.gov - which is available on ReallyReady.org - criticized the government site for containing incorrect and incomplete information, generic advice and overly lengthy explanations.

Hesaltine also noted the lack at the time of information available for people with disabilities or special needs. There are only 21 lines of emergency preparedness advice aimed at the disabled, she wrote, the same amount devoted to preparing one's pet for an emergency.

The goal of the project was to spur Homeland Security to improve its Web site, which was launched in 2003, Stebbins wrote in his response to the agency.

Since the federation launched its site in early August, at least two changes have apparently been made to government site. Ready.gov has added two new sections, one for people with disabilities and one for older Americans.

"We believe this is excellent," Stebbins said. "This is clear and bullet-pointed unlike the other information on the site."

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Lawmakers may cut nuclear detection office funding

Jon Fox — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

As officials often put it, the office is in charge of developing a nuclear detection "architecture," -- essentially a strategy for global deployment of nuclear detectors -- but responsibility for implementing that plan sprawls across a network of government agencies, including the FBI and the Defense, Energy, Justice and State departments.

However, some lawmakers have questioned the office's ability to coordinate the deployment of that plan. The Senate Appropriations Committee in June recommended withholding $80 million in "research, development and operations" from fiscal 2007 Homeland Security Department funding until an agreement is reached between all the agencies involved in nuclear detection regarding their responsibilities. The detection office itself is part of the Homeland Security Department.

The committee expressed concern that "DNDO lacks the ability to ensure these agencies will follow through with their role in this architecture." In addition, the committee recommended cutting more than $93 million from the president's $535 million budget request for the office.

That includes all fiscal 2007 funding -- more than $65 million -- for a grant program designed to put the nation's research universities to work on the problems of nuclear detection. The committee said the program too closely mirrored an existing initiative within Homeland Security's Science and Technology Office.

Lawmakers also cut $18 million from a program to enhance detection of shielded plutonium or uranium, due to earlier delays in the program's inception.

The committee also halved the office's $17 million nuclear forensic budget, noting that the FBI and the detection office jointly manage the nuclear attribution program. If the FBI shares management of the program, it should also contribute funding, the committee report recommends.

Director Vayl Oxford last week said cuts to his office's research budget could hamper efforts to develop next-generation nuclear detectors.

The academic research program cut by the Senate is "the future for this country for this area," Oxford said during a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing. The cuts "will hurt our ability to get the universities and colleges engaged in this topic, to bring the best and brightest to the forefront."

"We need to work with the Senate in the conference process to see if we can restore that," Oxford said.

A House version of the same appropriations bill reduces funding by $35 million to $500 million. The House Appropriations Committee removed funding for the office's "surge" program. The program was designed to provide federal, state and local law enforcement with rapidly deployable equipment for nuclear detection during periods of heightened threat conditions.

The House also the trimmed research funding request from $100 million to $85 million. While the White House request would have represented a 70-percent increase over fiscal 2006 DNDO funding levels, the House bill still bumps up the office's budget by nearly 60 percent.

Unlike the Senate committee, which expressed concerns about the detection office's ability to get related agencies to implement its architecture, the House committee included a dose of praise in its appropriation report.

"The committee is impressed with the aggressive efforts and focus of this new organization. Though only a year old, DNDO has provided timely and accurate information, worked with Congress to clarify its important mission, and appears well on its way to greatly expanding domestic capability for detection of illicit nuclear materials."

Such an assessment is slightly at odds with a March report from the Government Accountability Office. The report called Homeland Security's review process for providing requested information to Congress "cumbersome," noting that it has resulted in funds being available later than expected.

The delay in funding, in turn, has resulted in a delayed deployment of radiation detectors at U.S. ports of entry.

The report also called Homeland Security's planned schedule to install more than 3,000 radiation detectors by 2009 at a cost of $1.3 billion "highly uncertain."

A New Office

The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office officially began operations on April 15, 2005. However, discussions on the new agency had begun nearly a year earlier in May 2004.

"It was understood that to effectively combat the threat of smuggled nuclear weapons the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy and the Department of Homeland Security had to be better organized," said Jonah Czerwinski, a senior researcher with the Center for the Study of the Presidency.

There were, in essence, two questions at the core of the issue: Are we at the limits of physics or the limits of technology in detecting the presence of smuggled nuclear material? Also, are the various agencies involved set up in the best way to prevent nuclear smuggling?

"The answer to the second question was a resounding 'no'," Czerwinski said. The Center for the Study of the Presidency acted as a catalyst for the new office, conducting round table discussions and bringing together officials from the executive branch and experts from outside government, Czerwinski said.

Involved in these discussions were then-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, staffers for Vice President Dick Cheney's office and personnel from the U.S. national laboratories. Norman Augustine, then chairman of the board for defense contractor Lockheed Martin, led the meetings.

The goal was to create a truly comprehensive solution to detecting smuggled nuclear material, one that extended well beyond Homeland Security. That meant addressing the problem across all phases of "an adversary's activities, including motivation, planning, delivery and exploitation," according to notes from the first meeting.

"The purpose was to elevate this issue so it doesn't become just another element of bureaucracy or another budget line," Czerwinski said. The program meant looking beyond just the challenges of detection and examining how existing programs were working together, he said.

By the end of 2004, Deputy Homeland Security Secretary James Loy was ready to take the idea of this new coordinating agency to the White House, Czerwinski said.

"We started meeting with the vice president," he said. In January 2005, Czerwinski and Loy met with Cheney, his then-national security affairs assistant Lewis Libby and other members of the vice presidential staff. "For about an hour we went over some of the concepts in play."

The agency's first appellation was the National Domestic Nuclear Defense Office, a name that seems to reflect the broad vision sketched out in the 2004 discussions.

It was not always assumed that this new office would fall within the Homeland Security Department. There were discussions of housing it in the Defense Department or within the White House, Czerwinski said.

When the office found a home at Homeland Security, however, the name shifted. "Defense means something, and it means something that DOD owns," Czerwinski said.

Once the office's parent department was known, Czerwinski said, there was a struggle to ensure that it reported directly to the secretary and that it was not lumped together with the department's Science and Technology Office.

The new office was to spearhead the aggressive pursuit and deployment of new detection technology, but also had a broader mission. It was designed to be an interagency "hub," Czerwinski said.

In addition to drafting a "global detection architecture," the office was designed to serve as a "focal point" to coordinate nuclear detection efforts within the executive branch, Oxford said last week.

Detection efforts were receiving little attention before 2005, said former DNDO deputy chief Mike Carter. As notes from the 2004 round-table session describe it, "basic research needed to improve the sensing and detecting capabilities of smuggled radiological and nuclear material remain stovepiped" across the executive branch and the agencies involved.

Before the detection office's inception "research and development capabilities were what I would call way underfunded," Carter said. "Investment in radiation detection had gone to almost nothing."

The various agencies involved were, in part, "warring factions," Carter said. Those were problems Oxford's agency was designed to ameliorate by bringing together an interagency staff.

"It was partly a government social experiment," Carter said.

Before the office was formalized, Homeland Security funding for acquisition of detectors and research and development totaled about $173 million in 2005. The office is operating with a $315 million budget this fiscal year. While it remains to be seen if it will receive the $535 million requested for fiscal 2007, Oxford told the Senate subcommittee, "We are on the right trajectory."

The additional funding has been directed to research activities and the deployment of radiation detectors at the nation's ports.

With support from Congress and the White House, Oxford expects the office budget to crack $1 billion in about five years.

From five or six federal employees about 18 months ago, the office is projected to have more than 100 next year, Carter said.

Governmental and independent critics, however, have questioned just how well the agencies have been brought together, and the proposed Senate funding cuts seem to reflect some of those questions.

The office's mission, has been defined a number of times in a number of different ways, said Michael Levi, a nuclear terrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. Lawmakers might be asking, in effect, just what the agency does.

"I suspect that the funding cuts may have been made in part to send the signal that Congress needs more information," Levi said.

"Key parts of Congress appear to have different ideas of what DNDO's mission is, and those sometime differ from how DNDO defines its mission itself. That's problematic," he said.

Referring to the laudatory language in the House appropriations bill, Levi sees a conception of an office with a purely domestic scope, but the language used by Oxford and others speaks to something broader than that.

"DNDO talks about a 'global architecture,' which is a great goal, but that's different from domestic detection," Levi said.

Czerwinski said the Senate's budget figures are disheartening, and the demand for memoranda of agreement between the detection office and the other agencies involved might represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what the office was designed to do.

It was created to be a "focal point" of the interagency community, he said. The office is as much a part of Homeland Security as it is a part of the Defense, Energy or Justice departments, Czerwinski said. All those agencies have staff members working side by side with Oxford, making memoranda of agreement are superfluous.

However, he acknowledged that the conception of the office as a functioning point of interagency cooperation might not match the reality.

"The jury's still out," he said. "Ideally that's the way it's supposed to be, but it's still so young."

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DHS plans new nuclear detectors at ports

Jon Fox — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0400

By 2011, the department expects to have 1,400 of the next-generation screeners deployed at both ports and border crossings. The first 80 machines are scheduled to be installed this fall at the New York Container Terminal in Staten Island, N.Y.

Current radiological detection machines were installed after Sept. 11, 2001, as a shield against nuclear terrorism, a threat at the top of the nation's concerns, said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

The machines have screened 80 million cargo shipments entering the country since 2002, registering more than 300,000 false alarms.

"One of the problems that we have is the rate of false positives," Chertoff said.

Low levels of background radiation in harmless items often trigger the current machines. Kitty litter, granite and bananas have set the machines off.

The new detectors will range in cost from $350,000 to about $500,000 each, compared to the $180,000 for those currently employed. Officials, however, expect that the more-expensive systems will reduce the number of containers flagged for more-complete inspections each year from 821,000 to 15,000.

Using advanced computer software, the new devices will be able to better discriminate between different types of radioactive emissions, said Vayl Oxford, director of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office.

The new technology is also to be deployed to ports abroad as part of the Energy Department's Megaports Initiative to secure shipping before it enters U.S. waters.

The Homeland Security Department also announced a plan to deploy the new devices in and around U.S. cities, and Oxford said work on a $3 million pilot deployment program has begun in New York City.

Officials are concerned not only about a devastating nuclear weapon, but also radiological "dirty bombs" that would use conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material. Such a weapon could render whole city blocks uninhabitable until the area could be decontaminated.

Radioactive material, such as isotopes used in medical applications, could be obtained within the country, incorporated into a dirty bomb and smuggled into a city without crossing a border.

"How do we protect cities, major urban areas in this country, from a nuclear or radiological bomb that was fabricated inside the country?" Chertoff asked.

In an urban context, the challenge is balancing the need for security with the need to keep traffic flowing, he said. "We don't want to set the red flags up every time someone sends a shipment of very respectable granite into the city."

The New York pilot program will allow officials to determine the range of the detection machines in the complicated context of an urban area with at least 150 points of entry. The success of the experiment in New York could shape the way the detection machines might be employed elsewhere.

"I think we need to take the lessons learned from a difficult and complex environment like New York and extrapolate them to other cities," Chertoff said.

Even with the next generation of machines, the detection capabilities to sniff out highly enriched uranium clad in certain kinds of radiation shields are not complete.

With the new technology, inspectors would only be able to detect "lightly shielded" uranium, Oxford said. His agency has received proposals for additional machines that would enhance the ability to detect shielded uranium, and Oxford said he expects to awards those contracts this fall.

Even with enhanced detection capabilities at certain U.S. points of entry, some experts have argued that securing long U.S. borders is exceedingly difficult. They point to preventing terrorists from getting their hands on nuclear material as a more pressing concern.

Trying to stop a terrorist with a nuclear weapon at the border is nearly impossible, Robert Gallucci said last month at a Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council discussion.

"Game over. There are just too many ways," said Gallucci, a former U.N. weapons inspector and now dean of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Detectors are just one element in a larger architecture of defense, said arms control expert Michael Levi, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"This is one of a large number of small elements that will add up to something significant," Levi told Global Security Newswire. "No one should think of this as a substitute for security at the source."

Keeping terrorists from nuclear material is "the most important and the most powerful defensive measure," he said.

Initial one-year contracts for the new detectors have been awards to Raytheon Corp., Thermo Electron Corp. and Canberra Industries.

"We think this is fulfilling a major capabilities gap we have in today in reducing the risk of nuclear and radiological threats," Oxford said.

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