The Defense Department is working on a multi-tiered strategy to
boost the nation’s ability to counter the threat posed by
weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. U.S. capabilities to deter
and prevent attacks must be improved sooner rather than later, before
the United States experiences another 9-11, said Dale Klein, assistant
to the secretary of defense for nuclear, biological and chemical
defense programs.
“Unfortunately, I think we’ve moved into an era where
[the question is] not ‘Is it going to happen,’ but ‘when?’
… We just need to be prepared to handle it and minimize it,”
he told National Defense. For that reason, he added, “Our
intelligence-gathering capabilities need to be enhanced, we need
to have the technologies and people trained to respond.”
Referring to the recent string of suicide bombings in Israel, Klein
said it would be “easy” for attacks of that nature to
occur inside the United States. “If someone has a desire to
kill themselves and others, it is extremely difficult to prevent
that from happening,” he said.
Klein’s responsibilities include the safety and reliability
of nuclear weapons, the biological defense programs, the nuclear
treaties, chemical demilitarization and counter-proliferation. “The
portfolio is very challenging,” he said.
Before coming to the Pentagon last November, Klein had spent 25
years as a mechanical engineering professor and vice chancellor
at the University of Texas at Austin. He served on numerous high-level
Department of Energy committees, including the Nuclear Energy Research
Advisory Committee. Klein was appointed by then-governor George
W. Bush to the Texas Radiation Advisory Board.
Asked about growing concerns in the United States on the possibility
of a low-level nuclear attack, Klein noted that the emergence of
non-state sponsored terrorism has changed the dynamics of nuclear
defense. During the Cold War, there was fear of all-out nuclear
annihilation. Today, “what we’re looking at, on the
nuclear side, is more of a terrorist threat.”
Key to preventing terrorist groups from acquiring nuclear devices
is to deny them access to the required materials, said Klein. “We
are looking at assisting the former Soviet Union in safeguarding
their materials. … We also have export controls that monitor
sensitive or dual-use equipment,” he said.
“The former Soviet Union had a different method of accounting
than the United States. And the United States had a very strong
materials accountability program. The former Soviet Union had what
we call the ‘three Gs,’—guns, gates and guards.
That infrastructure has decayed. … It’s in the world’s
best interest to help ensure that the materials … do not get
into the hands of those who would like to do us harm,” he
said.
In response to news reports about whether “orphan nukes,”
from the former Soviet Union could surface in the continental United
States, Klein said, “We always hear rumors of missing nuclear
devices. I think we just have to look carefully when we hear that
information, that we follow it through to its completion, to find
out if there’s substance to it.
One source of concern, though perhaps not an immediate threat,
is the fact that other countries are getting close to manufacturing
their own nuclear weapons. “It’s no secret that Iran
is trying to develop a nuclear weapon. They’ve been at it
a long time,” he said.
Klein’s office recently updated its annual Report of Activities
and Programs for Countering Proliferation and NBC (Nuclear, Biological
and Chemical) Terrorism. The document is “a roadmap for what
the Defense Department should do, where should it put resources,
where are the risks,” he said. Much of the effort in this
report is devoted to the so-called “areas for capability enhancement.”
This year, “the number one area for capability enhancement
is biological defense,” Klein said.
He noted that a significant number of countries are involved in
biological and chemical programs. “The Soviet Union had a
massive biological program,” Klein said. “And so one
of the concerns that we have is people from the Soviet Union who
were involved in that program selling their services. We have an
interest in trying to prevent terrorist groups from getting that
technology,” he said.
The United States has robust capabilities to detect nuclear threats,
said Klein. “That’s one of the good news items about
anything radioactive, our detectors work quite well. … The
technology is exciting and refreshing.”
Because there are many levels of threats, the counter-proliferation
program at the Pentagon is a “multi-tiered approach,”
Klein said. The strategy is based on “prevention, deterrence,
then the counterforce, active defense, passive defense, and then,
in the unlikely event that something occurs, consequence management.”
The approach applies to both domestic and global counter-proliferation.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is gathering intelligence about a possible
new type of weapon, which does not fall neatly into the chemical
or biological category. Sarin and mustard gases clearly are chemical
weapons. Biological weapons are virus-based, such as anthrax and
smallpox. In between the chemical and the biological, he said, “You
have shades of gray, where you can mix the two.”
“A toxin is a chemical that is secreted by a microbe. So,
is that a biological or a chemical or is it both? It’s not
a broad line,” said Air Force Col. Michael Kelly, Klein’s
military assistant.
The improvements planned for biological defense include intelligence
gathering, technologies, training, vaccines, civil support teams,
said Klein.
Substantial efforts are being devoted today to train first responders,
he said. “If you talked to local responders three years ago
and asked them how many knew about anthrax, it’d be a very
small number. Ask how many of them know today about anthrax—every
one of them is going to know about it.”