Safety Against Chemical, Biological Arms Doubted
By
Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 30, 2002;
Page A01
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.),
who recently visited U.S. troops in Europe, found that "they did not
have the best equipment we have, and that is a concern to me."
As the Pentagon girds for
possible military action against Iraq, it is having problems providing
U.S. troops with state-of-the-art protective gear against chemical and
biological attacks, lawmakers from both parties said this week.
The lawmakers' worries have
been buttressed by the General Accounting Office, which recently
reported "continuing concerns" about equipment, training and research.
The GAO said that for six years, "we have identified many problems in
the Defense Department's capabilities to defend against chemical and
biological weapons and sustain operations in the midst of their use."
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of the Government Reform
Committee's national security subcommittee, said the latest problem
Pentagon officials uncovered involves gas masks that have the wrong
gaskets and will require extensive inspections to ensure that they are
functioning properly.
Shays said he is also concerned about the Defense Department's
inability to manage millions of protective suits so that units likely to
deploy to the Persian Gulf receive the highest-quality gear, with
250,000 defective suits unaccounted for in the Pentagon inventory.
"I visited the troops in Europe, who I believe will be first
responders in Iraq, and they did not have the best equipment we have,
and that is a concern to me," Shays said. "We don't know where some of
our best suits are
-- they are God knows where. And in some cases, we've mixed bad
inventory with good."
Raymond J. Decker, the GAO's director of defense capabilities and
management, said he was not convinced that the Pentagon had enough new,
highly protective, lightweight suits to equip all forces likely to fight
a war in Iraq.
With the new suits in relatively short supply, Decker said, the
Pentagon must rely on millions of older suits manufactured since 1989.
But the quality of those charcoal-lined garments, he said, diminishes
with age.
A Capitol Hill source, who asked not to be named, said recent
Pentagon tests had revealed that the older suits are good for only a day
or two after they are removed from their protective packaging. If
additional testing turns up similar results, the source said, "they've
got a big problem."
The GAO told Shays's subcommittee in October that the Pentagon could
not locate 250,000 defective suits manufactured since 1989 by a New York
company called Isratex, whose officers have been convicted of
intentionally providing the military with defective garments. An
additional 530,000 defective suits produced by the firm have been
located and removed from military stocks.
In a letter sent Wednesday to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a
member of Shays's subcommittee, Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.),
cited "extremely troubling" testimony by his subordinates on chemical
and biological preparedness, particularly with regard to the 250,000
defective suits still missing.
In the letter, Schakowsky asked Rumsfeld to certify that all troops
deployed to the Gulf for any possible military action against Iraq "have
been provided with equipment to protect against chemical and biological
attacks in quantities sufficient to meet minimum required levels
previously established by the Department of Defense."
The threat to U.S. forces is particularly acute as the Bush
administration puts the finishing touches on invasion plans to topple
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein if his government does not relinquish its
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and fully cooperate with U.N.
weapons inspectors.
The CIA says Iraq most likely has stockpiled "a few hundred metric
tons of chemical warfare agents," including the nerve agents VX, sarin,
cyclosarin and mustard gas, and also possesses anthrax and other lethal
biological agents that could be weaponized.
Iraq did not use chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces
during the Gulf War, even though Hussein ordered commanders to fill Scud
missile warheads, bombs and artillery shells with chemical agents. But
many analysts say Hussein and his most loyal commanders will not
hesitate to use them in another war, because this new military campaign
would be for the explicit purpose of toppling Hussein's government.
Anna Johnson-Winegar, the Defense Department's deputy assistant
secretary for chemical and biological defense, said she believed the
Pentagon would be able to reach a "goal" for providing all troops sent
to the Gulf with the new protective suits, officially named the Joint
Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology, or JSLIST, suits.
Johnson-Winegar also said recent tests had given defense officials
"complete confidence" in the protective capabilities of the JSLIST suits
and the older garments.
Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who commanded the 24th Infantry
Division during the Gulf War and is under Pentagon contract to brief the
commanders of units likely to deploy on what to expect in any military
action against Iraq, said he believed that U.S. forces were well
prepared for chemical or biological attacks.
"Every fighter wing, every Navy ship at sea, every Army battalion is
fully equipped to fight in a chemical environment," McCaffrey said. He
underscored the threat last month when he told commanders of the 3rd
Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., that they should expect to be
attacked with chemical weapons.
Lt. Col. Stephen M. Twitty, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division's
2nd Brigade, deployed in Kuwait, said his unit was well equipped and
well trained to withstand chemical or biological attacks, having trained
in offensive and defensive operations for as long as seven hours in full
protective gear.
"During these training maneuvers, we tested our soldiers' ability to
fight, test for agents [and] decontaminate themselves and their
equipment," he said. "Additionally, we have conducted foot marches in
[full protective gear] over long distances."
The U.S. military's preparedness for chemical and biological warfare
has greatly improved since the Gulf War, when 100,000 troops were
exposed to trace levels of sarin nerve gas when engineers blew up sarin-filled
rockets at a munitions dump in Khamisiyah in March 1991.
In addition to the new protective suits and masks, U.S. forces are
equipped with armored M-93 Fox vehicles that detect mustard gas and
nerve agents on the battlefield in less than a second, sounding alarms
that give soldiers time to climb into protective suits, masks, boots and
gloves. Military units also surround their bases with M8 alarms to
detect the presence of nerve agents.
The Pentagon has also recently installed 52 stationary biological
sensors called Portal Shield in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United
Arab Emirates and Bahrain to complement a mobile biological sensing
system towed by a Humvee that is designed to patrol the battlefield and
provide early warning of a biological attack.
But unlike chemical sensors, biological sensors take as long as 20
minutes to detect the presence of germ weapons, greatly increasing the
risk that soldiers would be exposed to biological agents before donning
their protective gear.
Even the Pentagon's new JSLIST garment and M40 silicone rubber gas
mask cannot stop some biological agents and a powdered version of VX
nerve agent called "Dusty VX."
One difficulty in assessing the Pentagon's readiness in the chemical
and biological arena is that much information about the protective
qualities of the new equipment remains classified.
Johnson-Winegar declined to discuss whether the military's protective
suits would be effective against Dusty VX.
"It's classified information," she said, "and it's an operational
security concern."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
