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- WASHINGTON (UPI) - Counterterrorism
consultants and U.S. officials told a congressional panel Wednesday that
the threat of terrorists using "weapons of mass destruction"
against civilians is real but "overstated" by the media and in
popular culture.
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- RAND consultant Brian Jenkins, however, said the need
for
public education about such potential attacks is crucial, warning the
panel, "Even if a terrorist attack involving biological and chemical
weapons were to kill only a small number of people...if we do not
communicate
well it could provoke national hysteria."
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- Jenkins and other
consultants testified before a House
Government Reform subcommittee on
national security. All agreed that the
threat of a catastrophic
"event" involving weapons of mass destruction
was unlikely,
though not impossible.
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- Earlier, counterterrorism officials from the General
Accounting Office told the panel that constructing and using a biological
or chemical weapon was much harder than popularly realized.
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- Jenkins emphasized
that "although I am an adviser
to the president of the RAND Corp.
my comments this morning are entirely
my own." He apologized to
the subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Christopher
Shays, R- Conn., for the
imprecision of his advice when it came to the
use of national
resources.
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- "I don't think we can do well in predicting...what
will
happen or what might not happen," Jenkins said. "We can
say
that limited attacks would be more likely than large-scale attacks.
We
can say that crude dispersal techniques in a contained environment are
more likely than the poisoning of cities."
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- He conceded that such
forecasting imprecision goes against
the grain of "the new
orthodoxy" surrounding counterterrorism
issues.
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- Jenkins said
"the possibility that terrorists might
resort to chemical or
biological agents" is an idea that has been
around for decades.
"That 'it is only a matter of time before terrorists
use such
weapons' is a relatively new idea that has in fact become part
of the
new orthodoxy."
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- There have been several changes on the world scene,
Jenkins
said, that have moved what was once "an exotic possibility
years ago"
to "the inevitability that we see today" in
the public mind.
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- Jenkins cited "the growth of organized crimeand
corruption
in Russia....While we don't have, to my knowledge, direct evidence
that
chemical or biological substances have been stolen...in Russia, we
do
have certainly ample examples of other weapons being sold through criminal
organizations.
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- "Another factor is that today's terrorists seem
more
interested in running up a high body count than in advancing political
agendas," Jenkins said, with terrorists moving away from ideological
terrorism to a form "inspired by someone's vision of
God."
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- Nevertheless, Jenkins said, "We cannot conclude
that a
catastrophic attack by someone using chemical or biological weapons
is
inevitable.... There is no inexorable progression from truck bombs to
weapons of mass destruction."
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- He advised Congress to respond
to a potential terrorist
threat by devoting resources to those areas
that have value in themselves
outside of the terrorism arena, such as
medical response teams.
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- Earlier in the hearing, Henry Hinton, assistant
comptroller
general for the GAO's national security and international
affairs division,
told the subcommittee that his agency conducted a
"risk assessment"
of the threat from terrorist
"events" that would cause at least
1,000 casualties.
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- To cause such an
event, Hinton said, terrorists "would
have to overcome a number of
technical problems." He added later,
"The skills that you'd
have to have to weaponize (a chemical or biological
agent) are not that
plentiful."
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- But under questioning from Shays, Hinton conceded that
the risk
assessment did not cover the possibility of a "rogue nation"
either carrying out such an operation itself or helping a group of
terrorists
to do so.
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- Shays asked Hinton directly whether he believed there
would be a terrorist attack using a "weapon of mass destruction"
in the United States within the next 20 years.
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- Hinton replied, "We are
being advised (by the intelligence
community)...that the
likelihood...is growing."
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- But in discussing any likelihood of such a strike,
Hinton
said, "the key word is an attempt" rather than a
successful operation.
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