U.S. Border Officials Claim to Have Intercepted 'Weapons of Mass Effect'

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Wednesday February 16, 2011

WMD Seized Entering U.S., Details Remain a Mystery - Jim Kouri for The Examiner [link]

• A U.S. customs officer is quoted by a local San Diego TV news show as saying that government protection personnel intercepted what was termed a weapon of mass effect. Other than that statement, which was televised on February 11, there were few details.
• When asked if U.S. homeland security agencies intercepted chemical agents or other weapons at U.S. ports of entry, San Diego's Assistant Port Director Al Hallor replied, "At the airport, seaport, at our port of entry we have not this past fiscal year, but our partner agencies have found those things."  When pressed for information regarding radiological "dirty bombs" or nuclear weapons, Hallor said, "Correct. Weapons of mass effect." Hallor hinted that such a device has been located at a U.S. point of entry, but he would not specify where.
• Efforts by the Law Enforcement Examiner to discover if the recent San Diego incident was a "red team" operation met with negative results.  In the past, so-called "red teams" -- covert investigators working for the Government Accountability Office --successfully simulated the cross-border movement of radioactive materials or other contraband into the United States from both Mexico and Canada.
• As a result of these tests, the GAO concluded that terrorists could use counterfeit identification to pass through most of the tested ports of entry with little chance of being detected.

Obama Threatens to Veto Spending Bill - Josh Rogin for "The Cable" [link]

• President Obama has officially threatened to veto the continuing resolution funding bill now being debated in the House if it contains drastic cuts to national security, but it remains unclear if large cuts in diplomacy and foreign aid programs would be enough to force White House action.
• The bill would fund the government from March 4, when the current continuing resolution expires, until the end of fiscal year 2011 on Oct. 1. The House Republican leadership's version would cut $11.7 billion, or 21 percent, from the president's 2011 budget request for the State Department, USAID, and foreign operations, as well as $16 billion from the Defense Department's fiscal 2011 request.
• "If the President is presented with a bill that undermines critical priorities or national security through funding levels or restrictions, contains earmarks, or curtails the drivers of long-term economic growth and job creation while continuing to burden future generations with deficits, the President will veto the bill," the Office of Management and Budget said in its statement of administration policy on the bill, issued on Tuesday.

Exclusive: New National Intelligence Estimate on Iran complete - Josh Rogin for "The Cable" [link]

• The U.S. intelligence community has completed and is circulating a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear weapons program that walks back the conclusion of the 2007 NIE, which stated that Iran had halted work on its covert nuclear weapons program.
• Intelligence officials briefed executive branch policymakers on the revised NIE last week. The document is being shared with members of Congress and their staff this week, an administration official and several Capitol Hill sources told The Cable. This is in advance of an early March meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors, where there may be another resolution on Iran's nuclear program, the official said.
• The 2007 NIE was attacked in public due to its conclusion: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." The new estimate might not directly contradict that judgment, Hill sources report, but could say that while the intelligence community has not determined that Iran has made the strategic decision to build a nuclear weapon, it is working on the components of such a device.
• House Foreign Affairs ranking Democrat Howard Berman (D-CA) told The Cable he had heard the new NIE would walk back the controversial conclusions of the 2007 version, but that he hadn't read it yet. Regardless, he said, the 2007 Iran NIE was now obsolete and discredited.
• Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI), who supported the conclusions in the 2007 NIE, contended that the old estimate was misconstrued as an attempt by its authors to head off an attack against Iran by the Bush administration.

Iran's Natanz Nuclear Facility Recovered Quickly From Stuxnet Cyber Attack - Joby Warrick for The Washington Post [link]

• In an underground chamber near the Iranian city of Natanz, a network of surveillance cameras offers the outside world a rare glimpse into Iran's largest nuclear facility. The cameras were installed by U.N. inspectors to keep tabs on Iran's nuclear progress, but last year they recorded something unexpected: workers hauling away crate after crate of broken equipment.
• The story told by the video footage is a shorthand recounting of the most significant cyberattack to date on a nuclear installation. Records of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog, show Iran struggling to cope with a major equipment failure just at the time its main uranium enrichment plant was under attack by a computer worm known as Stuxnet, according to Europe-based diplomats familiar with the records.
• But the IAEA's files also show a feverish - and apparently successful - effort by Iranian scientists to contain the damage and replace broken parts, even while constrained by international sanctions banning Iran from purchasing nuclear equipment. An IAEA report due for release this month is expected to show steady or even slightly elevated production rates at the Natanz enrichment plant over the past year.
• "While it has delayed the Iranian centrifuge program at the Natanz plant in 2010 and contributed to slowing its expansion, it did not stop it or even delay the continued buildup of low-enriched uranium," the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said in the draft, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post.

Son of North Korean Leader Is Said to Be Given No. 2 Post - Mark McDonald in The New York Times [link]

• In what appeared to be a definitive declaration of his status as the designated heir apparent in North Korea, Kim Jong-un has been appointed to a senior position on the National Defense Commission, the country’s most powerful body, according to a report Wednesday by a leading newspaper in Seoul.
• The Chosun Ilbo, citing an unnamed source in North Korea, said Mr. Kim, the youngest son of the dictator Kim Jong-il, was recently named to the post of vice chairman of the defense commission.
• The appointment would effectively make Kim Jong-un the second most-powerful official in North Korea after his father.
• “Kim Jong-un assuming such a position is quite natural, and not surprising,” said Paik Hak-soon, director of the Center for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute near Seoul. “It’s not too early for something like this. Sooner or later it was to be expected.”

White House Requests $27M For NYC Radiation Detection - Gobal Security Newswire [link]

• The Obama administration is requesting $27 million in its fiscal 2012 budget for an antiterrorism program primarily aimed at protecting New York City from nuclear and radiological attacks, the Associated Press reported yesterday.  The Securing the Cities program installs radiation detectors in and around New York that would alert authorities to materials entering or exiting the city that could be used in a nuclear or radiological "dirty bomb" attack.
• The Obama White House had twice attempted in previous budgets to eliminate federal support for the initiative. Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Washington has come to understand that supporting terrorism defense initiatives such as Securing the Cities is a federal duty.
• "The Securing the Cities program is an absolutely vital security program, for the New York City/Long Island metropolitan area and for the nation as a whole," Representative Peter King (R-N.Y.) said in a press release. "New York City remains al-Qaeda’s top terror target, as evidenced by the at least 11 failed or foiled terror plots in New York City since 9/11. A radiological or nuclear attack in New York City would not only inflict a deadly toll in New York, but would also devastate the entire national economy".
• The Obama administration also requested more than $1.5 billion for other federal antiterrorism programs, Schumer said in a press release. The Urban Areas Security Initiative would receive $920 million, while the Transportation Security Grant Program and Port Security Grant Program would reach receive $300 million.