Israel conducted tests to assess the impact of dirty bombs

Israel conducted tests to assess the impact of dirty bombs

Published 9 June 2015

 

Between 2010 and 2014, Israeli scientists at the Dimona nuclear reactor conducted a series of experiments, under the code name “Green Field,” to examine the consequences of a dirty-bomb explosion in Israel. The purpose of the experiments was defensive – to measure the likely effect of a dirty bomb and evaluate countermeasures. The experiments did not evaluate to offensive potential of a dirty bomb.

Between 2010 and 2014, Israeli scientists at the Dimona nuclear reactor conducted a series of experiments, under the code name “Green Field,” to examine the consequences of a dirty-bomb explosion in Israel. The purpose of the experiments was defensive – to measure the likely effect of a dirty bomb and evaluate countermeasures. The experiments did not evaluate to offensive potential of a dirty bomb.
In the experiments, scientists detonated twenty explosive charges weighing between a quarter of kilogram and twenty-five kilograms, mixed with the radioactive material technetium-99m, which is widely used in medical imaging. The experiments employed Dimona’s most advanced technologies, including micro-UAVs to measure radiation and sensors to measure the explosive yield.
Haaretz reports that most of the test explosions were done in the Negev desert, and that one of the explosions was conducted in an enclosure.
Scientists found that intense radiation could be detected at the core of the explosion, and that wind-carried radioactive particles would carry low-level radiation to the surrounding area. The scientists concluded that the most serious impact of a dirty bomb is the psychological impact on the population.
If the dirty bomb exploded in an enclosed area, that area would have to be closed for a long time to be decontaminated.
As part of the project, an experiment called “Red House” was meant to examine a scenario of radiological material being placed in a crowded location, but without exploding it. Radioactive material, diluted in water, was placed in the ventilation system of a two-story building. The experiment showed that this is not an effective way of spreading the material inside the building, as most of it was stopped by the air-conditioning filters.
The newspaper notes that after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Israel began preparations for dealing with a possible dirty-bomb explosion. In 2006 the Israel Ministry of Health issued instructions on the steps which had to be taken in the event of a radiological attack

U.S. to ratify two long-stalled nuclear terrorism bills

U.S. to ratify two long-stalled nuclear terrorism bills

Published 9 June 2015

 

Deep in the USA Freedom Actwhich was signed into law by President Barack Obama last week, there is a section which will let the United States complete ratification of two-long stalled treaties aimed at preventing nuclear terrorism. “Today, nearly 2,000 metric tons of weapons-usable nuclear materials remain spread across hundreds of sites around the globe — some of it poorly secured,” said former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Georgia), co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative(NTI). “We know that to get the materials needed to build a bomb, terrorists will not necessarily go where there is the most material. They will go where the material is most vulnerable.”

Deep in the USA Freedom Act which was signed into law by President Barack Obama last week, there is a section which will let the United States complete ratification of two-long stalled treaties aimed at preventing nuclear terrorism. One treaty is the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, which took effect in 2007. Countries which sign the treaty pledge to pass laws to criminalize certain nuclear terrorist actions and punish individuals who illegally possess or use radioactive or nuclear materials and devices or damage nuclear facilities. President George W. Bush signed the treaty in 2005, and the Senate ratified it in 2008, but it was not until last week that the Senate approved the necessary legislation to allow enforcement of the treaty, a requirement to complete the ratification process, notesU.S. News & World Report.
Last week’s passage of the surveillance bill will also let the United States complete ratification of the 2005 amendment to the 1980 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. U.S. News & World Report reports that the original treaty called for securing nuclear material during international transport, but by the 1990s it became clear that the treaty would not be enough to prevent nuclear terrorism because nuclear materials had already spread across the globe. The 2005 amendment requires nations to place standards to protect nuclear materials while it is stored and transported domestically, and take criminal action against people who try to steal, smuggle, or damage nuclear materials and facilities.
“Today, nearly 2,000 metric tons of weapons-usable nuclear materials remain spread across hundreds of sites around the globe — some of it poorly secured,” said former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Georgia), co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). “We know that to get the materials needed to build a bomb, terrorists will not necessarily go where there is the most material. They will go where the material is most vulnerable.”
The Homeland Security News Wire reported last year that Energy Department officials were becoming increasingly concerned with the amount of nuclear materials found in the domestic market. In one case, federal officials want to halt the use of blood irradiators used by hospitals and blood centers to ensure that blood is properly treated before transfusions occur. The irradiation devices contain cesium chloride, a highly radioactive powder which terrorists could use to make a dirty bomb.
“If we could make headway on this — if you could get all the cesium chloride off the market — it would be permanent risk reduction,” said Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists.
“In failing to ratify these treaties, the United States is dangerously out of line with other countries that also have nuclear weapons and nuclear materials — among them Russia, China, India, and the United Kingdom — all of which have ratified both treaties,” former senior national security adviser to the energy secretary and NTI President Joan Rohlfing wrote in The Hill on 28 May 2013, shortly after activists broke into Oak Ridge, Tennessee’s Y-12 nuclear complex, the nation’s main storage vault for weapons-usable highly enriched uranium. “Failure to ratify these treaties is an embarrassment,” he said.
One possible reason for why it took so long for the Senate to pass legislation implementing the treaties after the House passed its versions in 2012 and 2013, is that Democrats in the then-Democratic controlled Senate could not agree on authorizing the death penalty for nuclear terrorism offenses. “Some Democrats who oppose the death penalty weren’t comfortable with that,” notes U.S. News.
Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) introduced legislation last month to authorize the death penalty, criminalize the support of nuclear terrorism, and allow the government to request wiretaps to investigate suspected nuclear terrorists.
“Fears of nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation are rising, especially as Iran moves closer to obtaining the world’s most dangerous weapons,” Grassley said in introducing his bill last month. “In this environment, it’s obvious that the government needs the ability to seek the death penalty for nuclear terrorists under the appropriate circumstances.”
These provisions, however, were not included in the USA Patriot Act, but could be added to future legislation.

Is there a homegrown terrorism trend in Boston?

Is there a homegrown terrorism trend in Boston?

Published 9 June 2015

 

Citing several incidents involving Boston-based terrorists, some ask whether homegrown terrorism might be a trend specific to Boston. “Clearly, there have been a number of incidents here, and some of that is because Boston is really an international city,” said former Boston Police Department commissioner Ed Davis. “It seems to be more than a coincidence,” says one scholar. “But there’s no good answer.”

Citing several incidents involving Boston-based terrorists, theBoston Globe has asks in a new editorial whether homegrown terrorism might be a trend specific to Boston.
Shelley Murphy and Peter Schworm write for the paper that outside of the infamous Tsarnaev brothers who set off explosives at the 2013 Boston Marathon, there have been other cases in the region in the past few years, including that of Tarek Mehanna, who translated documents for Al Qaeda from his Sudbury home; Rezwan Ferdaus, who planned to create drone bombs in Ashland; and most recently, a Roslindale man who was tracked by an antiterrorism task force and killed in an altercation last week.
“Clearly, there have been a number of incidents here, and some of that is because Boston is really an international city,” said former Boston Police Department commissioner Ed Davis, who is an international security consultant and a consultant to the Globe. “I don’t want to downplay the fact there have been repeated incidents. I think we have to look closely at it at this point.”
Despite still ranking behind New York City in terms of incidents of violent extremism, the numbers in Boston are high, and none of the cases can be traced to a similar network, according to J. M Berger, the coauthor of ISIS: The State of Terror and the author of Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam.
“There was a “robust radical presence in the Boston area in the 1990s, when members of the Al Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, New York — which was linked to the 1993 truck-bombing attack at the World Trade Center — moved to Massachusetts and operated an organization that sent fighters and supplies to Bosnia,” he said. “Most of that group’s members were sent to prison or deported.”
Even if there was once a localized radical social network, however, Berger added that the latest cases forego this pattern.
“One of the few indicators of whether someone will become a violent extremist is with whom they associate, whether over the Internet or in person,” Berger said. “If you’re friends with a violent extremist, you are likely to be one.”
James Forest, the director of security studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell’s Center for Terrorism and Security Studies, argued that the cases could not even be linked in a localized manner, so common are much of the characteristics across the country.
“We’ve seen similar kinds of plots in many cities,” he said. “These guys could just have easily been in Chicago, Denver, or Houston.” “The ideology [is what] motivates these kind of attacks, there are no geographical boundaries.”
Forest cited other recent cases in Chicago and Ohio as evidence of a broader trend outside of Boston.
“It seems to be more than a coincidence,” added Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, regarding whether Boston is seeing a great share of terrorism incidents. “But there’s no good answer.”

No government agency oversees handling of deadly pathogens in 1,495 U.S. labs

No government agency oversees handling of deadly pathogens in 1,495 U.S. labs

Published 9 June 2015

 

According to the CDC, 181 “organizations or entities” in the United States are registered as working with live anthrax, and 321 in total working with live pathogens. Within these 321 entities, roughly 1,495 laboratories are accredited under the Federal Select Agent Program to work with live pathogens such as anthrax. There is no official government agency to oversee production and research of bioweapons that does not – as the CDC does — engage in its own active pathogen research. “Even one spore is a sufficient seed stock from which an amount could grow to mount a biological weapons attack,” says one expert. “The sad circumstance is that this massive effort [U.S. research on anthrax] since 2001 has dramatically increased the chances of a biological weapon attack on the U.S., precisely by distributing a highly lethal strain of the agent with no structure and no ability to record where they have gone.”

The recent anthrax scare in which the bacteria was sent to fifty-two laboratories in eighteen U.S. states and South Korea, Canada, and Australia, is just another example of poor accountability among the nation’s labs tasked with researching and developing defenses against deadly pathogens.
The Pentagon disclosed last Wednesday that it inadvertently shipped anthrax to the labs, but it has yet to determine how the mistake happened, who is to blame, and why it was not discovered earlier. “We know of no risk to the general public,” Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work told a Pentagon news conference, adding that the anthrax was shipped in low concentrations and in secure packaging. According to thee Guardian, the anthrax was supposed to have been killed with gamma rays by Pentagon lab technicians before being shipped for use by commercial labs and government facilities in research and the calibration of biohazard sensors.
In 2014 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent what was supposed to be inactive anthrax to U.S. labs, exposing seventy-five people to live versions of the pathogen. The origin point of this year’s accident was Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, a military facility which produces anthrax in industrial quantities for military research.
Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biosecurity expert at Rutgers University, attributes the recent anthrax accidents to the increasing number of federally-backed labs tasked with working on bioweapon detection and prevention following the post-9/11 anthrax letter attacks, in which letters containing spores of anthrax were posted to the offices of several newspapers and two Democratic senators. Twenty-two people were infected. Five died.
“(It’s) spending that can’t possibly be defended on any rational basis,” Ebright said. “With each of the incidents in the past there has been a notable absence of responsibility. They know if you mess up, nothing happens; the programs aren’t reduced, the personnel suffer no consequences. So it’s all about the worst you could possibly have: no one watching, no rules, and no accountability.”
According to the CDC, 181 “organizations or entities” such as Dugway are registered as working with live anthrax, and 321 in total working with live pathogens. Within these 321 entities, roughly 1,495 laboratories are accredited under the Federal Select Agent Program to work with live pathogens such as anthrax. There is no official government agency to oversee production and research of bioweapons that does not – as the CDC does — engage in its own active pathogen research.
A 2013 Government Accountability Office report found “a continued lack of national standards for the design, construction, commissioning, and operation of high-containment laboratories” and concluded “no single federal agency was responsible for assessing overall laboratory needs.”
After the CDC’s 2014 anthrax accident, the agency said it would issue a set of binding guidelines for labs handling deadly pathogens, but no comprehensive guidelines have been issued. It is also unclear what authority the CDC would have over the affected labs, including those operating under the Defense Department. A spokesperson for the CDC told theGuardian that it “and (the U.S. Department of Agriculture) work jointly on regulating and overseeing the work done on select agents.”
Stephen Morse, who worked at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency between 1995 and 2000 on biodefense and is now a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, said accidents involving live pathogens in U.S. labs hint at a systemic issue, and speculated that the process by which machines irradiate the live pathogens, inactivating them, might be “poorly calibrated.” “Luckily for us, human beings are relatively resistant to anthrax compared to smallpox,” said Morse. “But that’s not something we should rely on.”
Ebright is concerned about what could happen should actors gain access to one of the many labs handling deadly live pathogens. “Even one spore is a sufficient seed stock from which an amount could grow to mount a biological weapons attack,” Ebright said. “The sad circumstance is that this massive effort since 2001 has dramatically increased the chances of a biological weapon attack on the U.S., precisely by distributing a highly lethal strain of the agent with no structure and no ability to record where they have gone.”
“It would be disappointing if the Department of Defense becomes the supplier for al-Qaeda that enables a bioweapon attack.”

TSA failed to identify 73 employees potentially associated with terrorism

TSA failed to identify 73 employees potentially associated with terrorism

Published 9 June 2015

 

The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (OIG) yesterday released a report on TSA’s controls over the vetting of aviation workers who apply for credentials allowing unescorted access to secured airport areas. The TSA repeatedly screens about two million airport workers, but OIG says that the agency failed to identify seventy-three workers potentially associated with terrorism. One reason for this slip: the DHS watch-list, against which the TSA checks airline and airport applicants and workers, is not as comprehensive as the government’s terrorist database. TSA says it will begin to check applicants and employees against the broader list by the end of the year.

The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (OIG) yesterday released a report on TSA’s controls over the vetting of aviation workers who apply for credentials allowing unescorted access to secured airport areas. DHS OIG reviewed TSA’s process for vetting workers for terrorist links, criminal history, and lawful status. OIG says that the review also sought to determine the accuracy and reliability of data the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) uses for vetting.
The TSA repeatedly screens about two million airport workers, but OIG says that the agency failed to identify seventy-three workers potentially associated with terrorism. “TSA acknowledged that these [seventy-three] individuals were cleared for access to secure airport areas despite representing a potential transportation security threat,” the OIG’s 34-page report said.
USA Today reports that the DHS watch-list, against which the TSA checks airline and airport applicants and workers, is not as comprehensive as the government’s terrorist database. The DHS terrorist screening database does not include all information from the National Counterterrorism Center’s more comprehensive Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE). In its formal response to OIG, TSA noted that TIDE list “includes raw data that may not have been corroborated or found to be fulsome enough for inclusion” on the DHS watch list.
TSA said that by the end of the year it would be checking applicants and employees against the broader government watch-list base. In May 2014, former TSA administrator John Pistole signed a memo asking to screen credentialed workers against the broader TIDE list.
TSA noted that it has already taken steps better to vet employees, following the December 2014 discovery of a gun-smuggling ring operated by employees at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.
“Immediately following the incident in December 2014, TSA increased random and unpredictable screening of aviation workers at various airport access points to mitigate security vulnerabilities,” TSA said in the statement. “TSA recognizes the value of complete and accurate information when conducting biographic and biometric vetting, and will continue to identify areas for enhancement.”
In the review, the DHS OIG concluded:

• TSA has multiple, layered controls for vetting workers for terrorism, and its process is generally effective. However, TSA could not identify all individuals on the Consolidated Terrorist Watch-list because current interagency watch-listing policy does not authorize TSA to receive all terrorism-related categories of information. DHS OIG identified seventy-three individuals with possible terrorism-related information which was not reported to TSA. TSA acknowledged that these individuals were cleared for access to secure airport areas despite representing a potential security threat.
• TSA lacks effective controls for vetting applicant’s criminal history and work authorization. TSA relies on individual airports for criminal history and work authorization checks. Presently, TSA does not have an adequate monitoring process in place to ensure that airport operators properly adjudicated credential applicants’ criminal histories.
• Moreover, law and FBI policy generally prohibit TSA and the airports to conduct recurrent criminal history vetting and rely on individuals to self- report disqualifying crimes. TSA is planning a pilot program for late 2015 whereby the FBI will begin providing automated updated from the FBI for new criminal history matches associated with individuals who have undergone prior criminal history records checks.
• With respect to work authorization vetting, TSA data indicates that airports may not be consistently verifying that credential applicants possess the immigration status necessary to work in the United States.
• Finally, DHS OIG identified thousands of aviation worker records which appeared to have incomplete or inaccurate biographic information, including incomplete names, passport numbers, alien registration numbers, Social Security Numbers, and aliases. TSA has taken steps to address some of these weaknesses, and enhancements should become effective within two years.

OIG notes that TSA agreed with the recommendations in the DHS OIG’s report. Inspector General John Roth — who will be testifying before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs about these and other TSA issues today (Tuesday, 9 June) — noted that “it is vital to airport security that only fully vetted aviation workers receive credentials to access secure areas of our nation’s airports. We are pleased that TSA has agreed to our recommended improvements.”

Pentagon, CDC investigating live anthrax shipping mishap

Pentagon, CDC investigating live anthrax shipping mishap

Published 8 June 2015

 

Pentagon chief Ashton Carter has announced that the Department of Defense, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is investigating the recent accidental shipment from a U.S. Army laboratory in Utah of live bacterium anthrax samples to fifty-one facilities in eighteen states and three foreign countries. The investigators have already identified the West Desert Test Center (WDTC), the testing area for Dugway Proving Ground, as the source of the mix up.

Pentagon chief Ashton Carter has announced that the Department of Defense, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is investigating the recent accidental shipment from a U.S. Army laboratory in Utah of live bacterium anthrax samples to fifty-one facilities in eighteen states and three foreign countries.
As theWashington Post reports, the review will include the testing of all spore-forming anthrax in the inventory of the military which had been previously marked as inactivated.
The live samples which were shipped were irradiated at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and thought to be dead, but something went wrong in the process. The irradiation process usually involves passing the packages of anthrax under electron beams which kill any live spores. Believing the anthrx samples to have been deactivated, Dugway scientists shipped the samples via commercial shipping services, such as FedEx.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno said human error was likely not involved, but Carter, while traveling in the Pacific late last week, said he intends to find out who was responsible.
Carter’s tenure, which began in February, has been marked by challenges – the capture by Islamic State militants of major cities in Iraq and Syria; significant budgetary shortfalls as the Pentagon grapples with the expensive legacy of years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The anthrax incident is yet another, and unexpected, challenge which also exposes weaknesses in the military’s handling of deadly substances, and with which Carter must now deal.
The review is overseen by Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and led by Frank Kendall, the undersecretary of defense acquisition, technology and logistics. The investigators will examine the “the root cause for the failed irradiation process on the live anthrax samples, the biohazard procedures and protocols used, the adherence to those procedures and the identification of systemic problems and steps needed to fix them.”
They have already identified the West Desert Test Center (WDTC), the testing area for Dugway Proving Ground, as the source of the mix up. The center is the main facility for biological and chemical weapons testing for the U.S. Army. The site has five different divisions, with one focused solely on biological threats such as anthrax.
Kendall is expected to begin work on the investigation within the next thirty days.

Winners of DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals announced

Winners of DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals announced

Published 8 June 2015

 

“May the best robot win” has been a frequently uttered phrase throughout the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals, held this Friday and Saturday at the Fairplex in Pomona, California. After years of research and development, several intense days of preparation at the competition site, a day of rehearsal and two full days of head-to-head competition in front of thousands of spectators, the verdict is in, and three winners were announced Saturday. The Robotics Challenge was launched in response to a humanitarian need that became glaringly clear during the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. The DARPA Robotics Challenge consisted of three increasingly demanding competitions over two years. The goal was to accelerate progress in robotics and hasten the day when robots have sufficient dexterity and robustness to enter areas too dangerous for humans and mitigate the impacts of natural or man-made disasters.

“May the best robot win” has been a frequently uttered phrase throughout the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals, held this Friday and Saturday at the Fairplex in Pomona, California. After years of research and development, several intense days of preparation at the competition site, a day of rehearsal and two full days of head-to-head competition in front of thousands of spectators, the verdict is in.
DARPA says that taking first place and the $2 million in prize money that goes with it is Team Kaist of Daejeon, Republic of Korea, and its robot DRC-Hubo. Coming in second and taking home $1 million is Team IHMC Robotics of Pensacola, Florida, and its robot Running Man. The third place finisher, earning the $500,000 prize, is Tartan Rescue of Pittsburgh, and its robot CHIMP.
DARPA program manager and DRC organizer Gill Pratt congratulated all twenty-three participating teams and thanked them for helping to open a new era of partnership between robots and humans.
“These robots are big and made of lots of metal and you might assume people seeing them would be filled with fear and anxiety,” Pratt said. “But we heard groans of sympathy when those robots fell. And what did people do every time a robot scored a point? They cheered! It’s an extraordinary thing, and I think this is one of the biggest lessons from DRC — the potential for robots not only to perform technical tasks for us, but to help connect people to one another.”
DARPA notes that its Robotics Challenge was launched in response to a humanitarian need that became glaringly clear during the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. The DARPA Robotics Challenge consisted of three increasingly demanding competitions over two years. The goal was to accelerate progress in robotics and hasten the day when robots have sufficient dexterity and robustness to enter areas too dangerous for humans and mitigate the impacts of natural or man-made disasters.
The DRC Finals competition challenged participating robotics teams and their robots to complete a difficult course of eight tasks relevant to disaster response, among them driving alone, walking through rubble, tripping circuit breakers, turning valves, and climbing stairs. A dozen teams from the United States and another eleven from Japan, Germany, Italy, Republic of Korea, and Hong Kong competed in the outdoor competition.
Participating teams represented some of the most advanced robotics research and development organizations in the world. They have been collaborating and innovating to develop the hardware, software, sensors, and human-machine control interfaces to enable their robots to succeed.
It was apparent that much work is yet to be done. Some robots fell, sometimes twitching for a few moments as if in frustration or pain, bringing groans from the grandstands and even a question from a reporter later in the day: “Is the MIT robot okay?”
Click here to see a congratulatory letter about the DRC Finals from President Obama. For more information about the DRC, including photos and video feeds, visit www.theroboticschallenge.org, or download the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals app for up-to-the-minute rankings, robot bios and much more.
“This is the end of the DARPA Robotics Challenge but only the beginning of a future in which robots can work alongside people to reduce the toll of disasters,” said DARPA director Arati Prabhakar. “I am so proud of all the teams that participated and know that the community that the DRC has helped to catalyze will do great things in the years ahead.”