PrintApril 12, 2007
Shoplifting Secrets
This is not a guide to shoplifting, but about the wholesale theft of U.S. strategic material and its consequences. Increasingly, American classified information and material is being compromised, either through espionage, outright theft or though negligence creating a serious breach in Western security. What seems amazing is that all this is hardly making any impression on those in charge of U.S. strategic security.
For example, in an article only briefly noted on April 2, 2007, under the banner: Computers missing at anti-spy agency: 20 desktop computers, at least 14 of which contained classified material on nuclear weapons design, are unaccounted for, and one computer reported destroyed is still in use, while others in operation are not even listed in their inventory.
What makes this report doubly disconcerting is that this is the 13th time in just over four years an audit has shown that the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology has lost computers used for nuclear bomb designs.
Ever wonder what became of the notorious 2001 anthrax letters attacks that occurred in the United States? The culprit to date has never been found, or for some unfathomable diplomatic reason has not been divulged. The anthrax spores underwent a thorough analysis, principally by the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and were proven to have been weaponized by silica gel, that drying substance found in shipments of optics and other goods subject to humidity. The silica made the spores easier to aerosolize, thus more susceptible to being inhaled by the maximum of victims. More intriguing, it was later discovered that the minute silica particles in the Sen. Leahy sample were individually coated with polymerized glass and then bound to the anthrax spores to make a more resilient weapon. Such treatment of weaponized anthrax was never before seen in the United States.
Iraq and al-Qaeda, teamed together, are now the principal suspects. Through skillful espionage operations and ingenious trial and error research they were able to obtain the necessary know-how to concoct some very sophisticated weapon-grade anthrax. Back in the 1980s Iraq bought some provisions for their al-Hakam biological research laboratory, where they were researching weaponized anthrax, from a Denmark firm called Niro Atomizer that included several spray dryers and silica gel; the anthrax spores came from Russia. The former chief U.S. weapons inspector, Dr. David Kay was quoted as saying:
Ever wonder what became of the notorious 2001 anthrax letters attacks that occurred in the United States? The culprit to date has never been found, or for some unfathomable diplomatic reason has not been divulged. The anthrax spores underwent a thorough analysis, principally by the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and were proven to have been weaponized by silica gel, that drying substance found in shipments of optics and other goods subject to humidity. The silica made the spores easier to aerosolize, thus more susceptible to being inhaled by the maximum of victims. More intriguing, it was later discovered that the minute silica particles in the Sen. Leahy sample were individually coated with polymerized glass and then bound to the anthrax spores to make a more resilient weapon. Such treatment of weaponized anthrax was never before seen in the United States.
Iraq and al-Qaeda, teamed together, are now the principal suspects. Through skillful espionage operations and ingenious trial and error research they were able to obtain the necessary know-how to concoct some very sophisticated weapon-grade anthrax. Back in the 1980s Iraq bought some provisions for their al-Hakam biological research laboratory, where they were researching weaponized anthrax, from a Denmark firm called Niro Atomizer that included several spray dryers and silica gel; the anthrax spores came from Russia. The former chief U.S. weapons inspector, Dr. David Kay was quoted as saying:
Additionally, Iraqi tapes from the 1990s, that recently came to light, indicate Saddam's intentions to use bio-terrorism against the United States. Computed together with the first Twin Towers attack, the hypothesis that Iraq and al-Qaeda were involved in terrorist activities against America is indisputably enhanced."...the Iraqis had developed new techniques for drying anthrax - techniques that were far superior to anything the United States or the old Soviet Union had. That would make the former regime of Saddam Hussein the most sophisticated manufacturer of anthrax in the world."
The reason for the indecisiveness in uncovering this, and the shortage of information on other terrorist campaigns, is that former presidents, Congress and the Senate in effect emasculated the U.S. intelligence community into impotency by limiting and restricting human-resources collection, aka human intelligence (HUMINT), thereby undermining counterintelligence to the point of despair. This led to an excessive dependence on electronic intelligence gathering (ELINT), in particular the intercepts of communications in order to have an "early-warning" of an intended terrorist attack, which in turn created an uproar among the civil-liberties contingent, further weakening intelligence gathering. Numerous hysterical activities against the intelligence community again diminished America's ability to defend itself from terrorist attacks, leaving it with no more than a reactive approach to terrorism.
Urgent, significant reform is crucial to tomorrow's successful counterterrorism operations. Owing to the fact that U.S. counterintelligence efforts are still so ineffectual, because they are not sufficiently aggressive, doors remain opened to terrorist infiltrating agents into government defense ministries, laboratories, army installations and countless other strategic sites. Unreasonable restrictions on counterintelligence agencies are counter-productive and self-defeating. If Western agents can't get into the enemy's base camp, due to ill-advised restrictions, and find out what is being planned, if the United States doesn't conduct counterintelligence investigations within its own agencies, on account of a fraternity mind-set, the nation is wide open to another major terrorist attack.
