Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
My prepared remarks are really not so much a statement as a comment that is supplementary to the testimony given this morning by Under Secretary Dorn. And so I simply wanted to say that I'm pleased to be here this afternoon to answer any questions that you might have regarding export controls and DOD's counterproliferation policies, particularly in the areas of chemical and biological weapons proliferation. We obviously wish to be fully cooperative with your hearing, your investigation, and are prepared to do so.
As Under Secretary Dorn explained, the Department of Defense was a major contributor, in 1990, to the development of the Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative, which expanded DOD's role in the review of export requests, and which promoted greater interagency cooperation through the establishment of interagency subgroups on export controls.
Let me underscore once again, however, the fact that DoD has never been in the business of export control licensing, either for dual-use items or for munitions.
We do, however, continue to be an active participant in the license review process, particularly and increasingly, in areas involving chemical and biological materials. These are coordinated multi-laterally through the Australia group.
We will continue to play a leading role in the U.S. Government's efforts to counter the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons, but we do not license. We are simply a reviewer of licenses.
As you know, in the period immediately prior to the conflict in the Persian Gulf, DOD's role in the review of chemical and biological related dual-use export licenses for non-communist countries, such as Iraq, focused only on the assessment of risk of diversion of these dual-use items to the Soviet Union or to other CoCom proscribed destinations.
We had, at that time, no authority to review licenses destined for Iraq, per se, in terms of their risk of proliferation. Additionally, of the export licenses that we did review for Iraq, we are aware of none that supported Iraq's chemical or biological weapons efforts.
Since the revelations of the Persian Gulf War, law and regulations have been modified to permit us to be more aggressive with regard to the review of dual-use export licenses to proliferant states per se.
As you know, the Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative was passed in November 1990, and, of course, Iraq today is subject to a total embargo on such items. We weigh in heavily now with recommendations against approval of cases where the end user is questionable, or where the items appear to have no legitimate defense or peaceful purpose.
As you also know, Mr. Chairman, the Administration's bill for the renewal of the Export Administration Act, which is now before your Committee, would give us the latitude to further review a large number of cases, and we could designate the categories that we wish to review.
In addition to these initiatives, we have now in prospect the multilateral support of 157 states, which have signed the Chemical Weapons Convention. When it is ratified, these states will undertake not to acquire, retain, or transfer chemical weapons or their precursors for the purposes prohibited under the CWC.
Finally, the President has directed that we pursue measures to strengthen the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention in order to enhance transparency and to promote increased verifiability of the use of these biological agents for peaceful and civilian activities.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my comment. I'd be very happy to take your questions.
The CHAIRMAN. How long have you been in your present job?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Since July 1993, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. What did you do before that?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Before that, I was the Deputy Executive Officer of the National Academy of Sciences.
The CHAIRMAN. Did you nave a position at any time in the Defense Department or anything related to it prior to that last assignment?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. No, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. So you were not, in a sense, in the Government, you were not in the loop when the request was made for these export licenses on, say, the biological items that were sent over to Iraq?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. That's correct, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. You've reviewed all that carefully, however, in terms of what happened on somebody else's watch?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I have, yes.
The CHAIRMAN. Now, and I want you to think very carefully about this because I'm prepared to challenge your statement, and that doesn't mean your statement might not be right, but did I understand you to say that none of the items that were shipped over to Saddam Hussein ended up being used in his biological or chemical weapons capability, things that were licensed and shipped from the United States?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. No, sir. What I said was that in none of the cases that DoD reviewed are we aware that those items wound up being used in chemical or biological weapons programs.
The CHAIRMAN. OK
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. But again, let me repeat that we had only very limited review authority, because it was only the retransfer issue at that time. It was only the potential for retransfer of items to the Soviet Union or to other communist countries at that time were we authorized to review.
The CHAIRMAN. Then you would not have reviewed the requests that were made directly by the Iraqis that came into the research labs here for some of these very dangerous biological specimens which we, in fact, shipped to them. You would not have reviewed those?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Only if the case was referred to us by the Commerce Department and, again, they would not have been referring those cases unless they anticipated the possibility of retransfer.
The CHAIRMAN. In other words, those would not have been within the scope of your review?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Not as a general practice, that's right.
The CHAIRMAN. OK, so you can't assert, one way or the other, as to whether those items ended up in Saddam Hussein's war machine, the stuff that we know we sent him, not for transshipment to somebody else, but the end shipment to him.
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. That's correct.
The CHAIRMAN. OK Because it's clear, when you go back and follow the pattern of what was being done here, that when they were requesting these biological specimens, they were being shipped over to, in some cases, the front operations within the Iraqi government, that were in fact part of their military apparatus. You are aware of that?
Dr. WALLERSTFIN. I have read information to that effect yes sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Did you happen by chance to see the letter, which had a little bit of a frantic tone to it, from Secretary Baker in the Bush Administration, as the war was getting ready to start, that we suddenly stopped the shipments to Iraq of these kinds of items, things that could be either used in chemical weapons or biological weapons or nuclear weapons. Are you aware of that letter that was sent around?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. No, sir, I am not.
The CHAIRMAN. We ought to give you a copy of it, because it was case of suddenly it dawned on people that we were going to have real problem facing off against weapons that we had inadvertently, one presumes, helped create.
And that's part of our problem here, but your testimony is that you only looked at the things that were going to be transshipped to the so-called rogue regimes that were on the bad guy list at the time. Is that right?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. To the countries that were proscribed by CoCom, which were the Soviet Union, China, and the other communist countries of the Warsaw Treaty Organization.
I might also mention, Mr. Chairman, that of course, these technologies are classically dual use in nature. They have both commercial and military applications. And so, in the period prior to the outbreak of the war, there was a legitimate commercial trade which may have contributed to the problem, but that is beyond the purview of the Department of Defense.
The CHAIRMAN. Are you in a position to tell us whether Iraq's biological warfare program was offensive in nature?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. The indications certainly after the war were that, from the evidence obtained, they were making strong efforts to obtain an offensive capability. Whether they had actually achieved that or not, I do not know, personally.
The CHAIRMAN. Were they capable of incorporating those items into weapons systems?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. In my judgment, they would have been capable of doing that, yes, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. You know, after the war, after even the bombing destroyed a lot of the weapons, we had taken into possession, very large quantities of chemical weapons. You are aware of that?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Yes, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. And in a deliverable form, a variety of deliverable forms.
What initiatives has the United States undertaken now to ensure an effective successor regime to CoCom?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. That process is now fairly well advanced, and I am a major player in that process representing my Department. We are, as you know, negotiating not just with the original 17 CoCom member states, but with a larger group that includes many of the other advanced industrialized countries of Europe, such as Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria.
Agreement has been reached in principle for a regime that will have two pillars; a dual-use pillar similar to the old CoCom, as well as an armaments pillar. We hope very much that the arms pillar will focus particularly on these countries of greatest proliferation concern.
The final details of the regime are still being negotiated, but it is our expectation, and we have preliminary agreement among the participating states, that the new regime will begin operation in the latter part of this year, after October.
The CHAIRMAN. What kind of controls would you recommend that we have in place to prevent chemical and biological, and for that matter, nuclear materials getting to countries in situations such as we've now seen where Iraq exploited our openness to their advantage and then ultimately as a threat to us and to others? What kind of controls do we need to have in this area to avoid having another one of these situations arise?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Well, we do have in place the Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative, which provides us with a safety net. Thus, in situations where an end user is considered to be questionable, where a company knows or has reason to know that an end user may not be intending to use the item in question for civilian application, it should be applying for an export license and the Government has the means to insist that they apply for such a validated license.
In addition, as I said, the new Export Administration Act will provide the necessary framework for the Department of Defense and for other national security-related agencies to request to review all broad categories of licenses related to chemical and biological precursors and other related items.
On the multilateral front, we have the Australia group operating today. As I noted in my comment, we hope very much that perhaps by early 1995, we will have a ratified Chemical Weapons Convention, which will then obligate the 157 signatory countries. This will include most, but I should say not "all" of the countries of concern, to a transparency regime where we and the multilateral authority, more importantly, would have the ability to inspect and to ensure that items were not being turned to military use.
I will add that the biological weapons problem is somewhat more difficult. It is, as I'm sure you know, much easier to conceal and it therefore presents us with a much greater challenge.
President Clinton, as part of his announcements last fall, has called for enhanced transparency measures to be developed in the Biological Weapons Convention. We are pursuing that and hope to be working with the other countries that are signatories to the Biological Weapons convention to promote greater transparency there.
The CHAIRMAN. You know, as we started down the track of trying to determine what was causing the sickness of the Gulf War veterans and their family members, and taking the symptoms and trying to overlay on the symptoms what kinds of exposures could have caused those health effects and health symptoms, that by the process of elimination, we worked our way back to biological exposures.
It was out of that that we continued to work back on an investigative trail to find that the United States had authorized, at the highest levels of our Government, the shipment of these very kinds of biological items to Saddam Hussein going into his war-making machine. And so there’s a very powerful case and logic and sequence of factual activity that would suggest that we had a big hand, presumably unwittingly , in helping him develop his biological warfare capability.
It’s led me to believe that we ought to be very careful about who we’re shipping these biological items to, and the fact that they are easier to conceal also should raise our alarm levels because I think you’ve got more and more of these regimes that are willing to go to any lengths in using these diabolical weapons even against their own people, which Saddam Hussein has a history of doing.
It seems to me we ought to be trying to strengthen the Biological Warfare Convention. I’m just wondering what you think we can do in that area, given the fact that it's in a sense more difficult to do the monitoring. How do we tighten this thing down so we don't end up having another situation like this arise in the future?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I think that the key, Senator, lies in transparency. Where countries are not prepared to be fully transparent in their dealings, which involves intrusive inspections.
I might note that that raises, in turn, the problem of proprietary information, because we have to bear in mind that it's the same technology that's used in pharmaceutical manufacturing, for example. And so just as we would have to prevail upon our pharmaceutical companies to be open to this kind of inspection, so would other countries. But it is only through intrusive inspection, and by countries agreeing to be open, that we can have any kind of confidence that these things are not being hidden.
I might also note, in response to your earlier comment, that the Defense Technology Security Administration, which is a part of the program elements that I am responsible for, has had an on-going program to identify the linkages between the front companies and the cutouts and the third party purchasers that are used, not just by Iraq, but by other proliferant countries, and we are pursuing this very aggressively. And, again, as we now assert the right to review these cases, we will be looking very carefully for these kinds of practices to prevent their recurrence in the future.
The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you what role, if any, have you played in the Department of Defense's investigation into the Iraqi chemical and biological warfare programs and into the discovery of or use of unconventional weapons during the Persian Gulf War?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. My office, which is newly reorganized as part of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, does play a direct role in support of UNSCOM and the IAEA. Indeed, one of my staff participated as the chief inspector on a recent mission to Iraq, where be directed the emplacement of chemical air samplers at strategic points around the country, to ensure that the Iraqi chemical capability is not reconstructed.
We have also been active in other aspects of ensuring that the thorough-going inspections that have been undertaken since the end of the war are completed. That is, we've been marshalling the capabilities of the laboratories and of other U.S. Government technical agencies to provide UNSCOM with the necessary technology that it needs to monitor on a long-term basis. And the same applies to the IAEA in the nuclear area.
The CHAIRMAN. How much knowledge do you have, as you sit here today, on the chemical and biological capability that Saddam Hussein had crafted for himself prior to the war?
Dr. WALLERSTFIN. Sir, I only know what I have read in the briefing papers. As we discussed earlier, I was not part of the U.S. Government at that time.
The CHAIRMAN. You have access to any and all records of that kind if you seek that access?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I believe I do, yes, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. I think it would probably be a smart thing for you to do. If you're going to figure out a way to make sure that we don't have a problem like this in the future, it's very important to do a careful reconstruction of what happened because I think the evidence now is so powerful, from so many different directions.
I don't know if you were here earlier, but we heard some information presented by the witnesses from the Defense Department, an estimate of some 14,000 sensors, chemical agent sensors put out into the field, that might have been going off on the average 3 times a day, but they were all false alarms.
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Yes, Sir. I unfortunately was not present this morning for the testimony, but I have read that assertion.
I might just add that one of the other responsibilities of my office is to work with the Services and with the acquisition part of the Pentagon to develop new sensor capabilities. We are actively pursuing as a top priority the procurement of new battlefield sensors in both the biological and the chemical area. We very much hope that, when and if we have to put soldiers in harm's way again, we will have more accurate and more rapidly responsive capabilities.
The CHAIRMAN. Does that also include the development of new chemical agent detection alarms?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Yes, Sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Are we still using the ones that we used in the Persian Gulf War? Are those still a standard issue item?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. There has been no new technology introduced in that area to my knowledge, sir, at this point. But, there is substantial research going on.
The CHAIRMAN. You know, the amazing thing about that, I mean, it's so incredible that it's unbelievable but if you put those two arguments together, it would be that the alarms that we had that kept going off when they shouldn't have and therefore were not useful to us, we're still using.
I mean, it just-
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. It takes time to come up with a better technological solution, but as I said, it is one of the top priorities that have been identified. We've had a series of groups that have been working under the Under Secretary for Acquisition. That was formerly Dr. Deutch. Dr. Deutch is still overseeing this process. He is now the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the chemical and biological sensor issue is one of the top priorities that have been identified for further work, and to field as rapidly as possible.
The CHAIRMAN. Do we have biological sensor capabilities that are now able to be deployed and give us real-time readings on biological exposures and biological weapons being used?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. No Sir. There is no fielded biological sensor.
The CHAIRMAN. How close are we to having something in that area?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I believe that we expect that we may have something before the turn of the century. We would be able, to have something fielded by then, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Does North Korea have a chemical weapons capability?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I would defer that question if I may, please, to my colleague from the Central Intelligence Agency, who will be appearing as your next witness.
The CHAIRMAN. Do you know one way or the other?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I have seen some information, but I'm not in a position to reach a net judgment on that.
The CHAIRMAN. My understanding is that they apparently have both, chemical and biological. It's a very important question, as you know, because things are tense there and you've just indicated that we do not have a biological weapon sensing capability that we can deploy at the present time.
And we're still using the chemical sensors that the earlier witnesses told us don't work properly.
So it would seem to me that if you put all that together and if, in fact, the North Koreans have that kind of a capability, somebody would have to think an awfully long time before they order American troops into a combat situation where we can't be assured that they're going to have adequate protection against those two kinds of weapons systems. Isn't that right?
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. I know that General Luck, the Commander of U.S. Forces Korea, has given substantial attention to this problem. He has indicated that he is satisfied with the readiness of his forces to anticipate any scenario that might involve the use of weapons of mass destruction.
The CHAIRMAN. Well, I hope that's right.
When I went back, in an earlier staff review I asked the question of how many of the senior military officers that were directing the war were up in the area where the chemical alarms were going off. I found that very few, if any, were. They were much further back, and it didn't give me a very good feeling.
These folks think there are adequate protections, I kind of like the picture of the Civil War generals that got on the horses and got out in front, and I'd feel a little more comfortable and a little more confident in the judgments if I saw some of the major signal callers in the strategy right up in the front areas breathing the same air, working with the same chemical detectors, relying on heir own advice in terms of putting their own health at risk. I have a bit of bitter feeling about it because I've seen so many sick veterans.
So I would hope that the people who have this level of confidence would, you know, we'd see them right up there, right up in the front when the going is unpleasant, and not back in some protected base area working out of a bunker.
I think that's all I have for you right now. I appreciate your coming. I'd urge you to stay with this. I think it's very important that we catch up to what the events are that are actually taking place in the world. I think we're behind in these areas.
Dr. WALLERSTEIN. Thank you, Senator.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.
Dr. Gordon Oehler, we d like to invite you to come forward. You serve as the Director of the Nonproliferation Center at the Central intelligence Agency.
We're pleased to have you here. I'd like to have you give us your statement at this time, and then we'll go to questions.
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