- WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Heeding
stern warnings the United States could face attacks involving biological
or chemical weapons, state, local and federal authorities are scrambling
to identify potential threats and prepare for them.
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- "A lot of attention is being paid to
preparedness,"
said one senior representative to the 16-agency National Response Center,
which handles any chemical or oil spills.
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- "We have a long way to go. I think everybody's doing
what they can," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity
on Monday on the sidelines of a conference on weapons of mass destruction
sponsored by Jane's Information Group.
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- The meeting, attended by more than 100 experts and
federal,
state and local authorities, came on the heels of warnings on Sunday from
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top U.S. officials that the
United States was still vulnerable to attack following the Sept. 11 assault
that left more than 5,700 people dead or missing.
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- Rumsfeld told NBC the United States knew some nations
with proven links to militant groups already had developed chemical or
biological agents for use as weapons, and it was possible that some of
the nations would assist extremist groups in obtaining those
capabilities.
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- Experts on Monday said agroterrorism posed an additional
threat that had hardly been discussed or assessed at all, and that would
be particularly difficult to avert.
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- REAL THREAT CITED
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- Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson
insisted
on Sunday the United States was ready to deal with a germ or chemical
attack.
He said eight secret U.S. government staging areas were poised to respond
to such an attack.
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- Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating lauded the federal response
but said the first people to respond to any bioterrorism incident were
ill-equipped to deal with such an attack.
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- "At this juncture, with all due respect, I think
most doctors, most nurses, most emergency management specialists at the
state level really don't know what to expect or how to respond and that
should be of concern to everybody," Keating told ABC's "Good
Morning America."
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- Sen. Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican who commissioned
a government report on preparedness for a bioterrorism attack, told ABC
the probability of such an assault had increased sharply.
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- "The threat is real and the American people need
to recognize that," Frist said. "The probability is low ... but,
as we saw on Sept. 11, that probability is increasing. It has increased
markedly over the last several years."
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- He said a General Accounting Office study released last
week underscored the lack of coordination among the federal, state and
local agencies that would respond to such an attack, a problem officials
said has been fueled by lack of funding.
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- Moreover, Frist said, the U.S. public health
infrastructure
was inadequate to handle "the surge capacity of thousands of people
coming to emergency rooms" after any attack.
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- ON THE FRONTLINE
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- Ken Alibek, lead scientist in the Soviet Union's
biowarfare
program from 1988 to 1992, agreed the threat was real. "Of course,
these weapons are under significant consideration for all, or a great
majority
of terrorist groups," Alibek told Reuters.
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- Now a strategist and scientist with a biotech start-up,
Alibek said it was "highly probable" that Afghanistan's ruling
Taliban government had access to chemical weapons.
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- Tara O'Toole, deputy director of the Center for Civilian
Biodefense Studies at Johns Hopkins University, told U.S. mayors on Monday
local agencies would be the first line of defense in any future biological
or chemical attack.
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- O'Toole said the agencies would be on their own for up
to 48 hours after an attack, until the federal government deployed doses
of emergency antibiotics from a national drug stockpile.
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- Joseph Foxell, head of information security at New York's
Human Resources Administration, warned that extremists could also
contaminate
U.S. agricultural crops or livestock.
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- Foxell said it would be relatively cheap and easy for
such groups to infect U.S. livestock with a disease such as West Nile virus
or barley crops with botulism, and it would be tough to monitor cropland
across the country.
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