Exercise finds U.S. unable to handle germ war threat
By Judith Miller and William J. Broad, From the NYT, April 26, 1998,
On a bright spring day last month, 40 officials from more than a dozen Federal agencies met secretly near the White House to play out what would happen if terrorists attacked the United States with a devastating new type of germ weapon, Government officials say.
The results were not encouraging.
Under the scenario, terrorists spread a virus along the Mexican-American border, primarily in California and the southwest. After doctors diagnosed the epidemic as smallpox, the dreaded killer once thought to have been eradicated, vaccines were rushed in to immunize the population. But what appeared to have been smallpox turned out to be a hybrid whose hidden side caused profuse bleeding and a high fever for which there was no cure.
As the scenario unfolded, officials playing the role of state and local officials were quickly overwhelmed by a panicked population, thousands of whom were falling ill and dying. Discovering huge gaps in logistics, legal authority and medical care, they began quarreling among themselves and with Washington over how to stem the epidemic. In truth, no one was in charge.
The outcome of the exercise surprised some participants but illustrated what others had long suspected: the United States, despite huge investments of time, money and effort in recent years, is still unprepared to respond to biological terror weapons...
...Last month's secret exercise, known as a table top, the civilian version of a military war game, used a genetically engineered virus - a mix of the smallpox and Marburg viruses.
...Among the shortcomings that were discovered, officials said, were that hospitals quickly exhausted supplies of antibiotics and vaccine. One participant said that it was very hard ''to get trained, immunized medical staff into an infected area.''
Federal quarantine laws turned out to be too antiquated to deal with the crisis, and almost no state had serious plans for how to take care of the people it had isolated.
Plus, what began as a domestic disaster rapidly spiraled into an international crisis as the epidemic threatened to spread into Mexico...
U.S. steps up opposition against land mine ban
NYT, Sunday, May 03, 1998 -- The Clinton administration is seeking to scrap a law that would impose a one-year moratorium on U.S. use of anti-personnel land mines beginning next February, The New York Times reported Sunday.
With the deadline looming, Secretary of Defense William Cohen and other Pentagon officials have stepped up their opposition in public and private appeals to Congress," the paper said.
The moratorium was signed into law two years ago but only comes into effect Feb. 12, 1999. Drafters of the law hoped the measure would spur the Pentagon into searching for alternatives to anti-personnel land mines.
The United States has refused to sign a separate international treaty backed by more than 100 nations that would ban the weapons.
The New York Times reported that military commanders feared the one-year moratorium would reduce their options in the event of an unexpected conflict involving U.S. troops, like the 1991 Gulf War...
Centreville, VA --
...The crisis aboard the Independence began last week when 14 sailors -- including six officers -- refused to take additional anthrax injections. According to Nhut Nguyen, one of the sailors involved in the incident, the officers were removed from the ship and the enlisted men were either fined, reduced in rank, or both.
Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American, was threatened with loss of citizenship if he did not comply with the order to take the vaccination. He has refused. There have also been reports of similar refusals on board the USS Stennis...
"...This policy of forcing military personnel to take injections against their will must stop." Eddington noted that his organization is exploring the possibility of a court challenge to the Pentagon's investigational drug policy.
Veterans for Integrity in Government (VIG) is a Washington, D.C.-area non- profit veterans' advocacy organization. Interested parties may contact VIG's main office at (703) 222-6637.
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