Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Monday, Sept. 16, 2002

"It could happen as easily today," Emerson emphasized, gazing over at his fellow panel members, all gathered Friday in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Convention Center for a review of "Security Beyond 9-11," a program concluding the American Society for Industrial Security International (ASIS) four day seminar on all matters dealing with the protection of America’s infrastructure.

Joined by Michael McConnell, former director of the National Security Agency; Gen. Eugene Habiger, former security chief at the Department of Energy; Ken Alibek, former first deputy chief of the Soviet Union’s bio-weapons program; and James Dunne, an analyst for the diplomatic security service of the Department of State, Emerson shrugged his shoulders in disbelief over the profiling policy being followed in America’s airports.

"At our ports we profile cargo based upon its country of origin, but we refrain from profiling air passengers by country of origin for reasons of political correctness,” Emerson lamented.

Emerson highlighted the distance yet to go in the war on terrorism by suggesting that among the 19 terrorist hijackers of 9/11, the group had some contact with no less than 150 different American cities in the months leading up to the day of infamy. This alone points to a substantial terror network still alive and well in the U.S., he said.

"The whereabouts of 21 key al-Qaeda leaders remains unknown," the author added.

As to the terror group’s foot-soldiers, about ten thousand were trained in the Afghan camps, he noted, but the arithmetic indicates that thousands are still in the field – not accounted for by arrests in Europe, Singapore, Italy, and Germany, or by U.S. internment, or by KIA estimates.

For his part, Gen. Habiger suggested that neither the Department of Energy’s hefty paramilitary force of 3,500 nor its large security budget of $1 billion could guarantee a secure energy infrastructure.

Risk Management, Not Risk Avoidance

"We are in the risk management business, not the risk avoidance business,” he concluded, noting for example that no less than 2600 foreign air carriers land in the U.S. each and every day.

Dr. Alibek emphasized that the nation still needed to "breed and cultivate a new generation of biologists” savvy in the ways of bio-terror.

"I’m scared now,” the former Soviet colonel admitted. "I wasn’t scared when I was working with the pathogens every day – even when some colleagues were accidentally killed."

Alibek suggested that we still have no sure methodology to even determine if a detected pathogen is naturally occurring, or represents a discreet bio-weapon.

McConnell’s subject matter dealt with threats to the nation’s cyber infrastructure, but he made the general observation that he hoped the American people would be given the benefit of "early warning, without the government hiding behind some cloak of secrecy.”

'Interrupt America'

McConnell, who participated in many computer models of terror threats on his watch, noted that despite all the sophisticated built-in protections, a trained cyber-terror band of 30 persons with a capital investment of just $30 million could "interrupt America."

Among other factors, the former NSA chief said this vulnerability was due to the fact that unlike World War II, where data was typically intercepted in passage, the digital age features "data in motion and data at rest,” giving the enemy a new and distinct advantage.

Referring to one particular computer simulation where bubonic plague is released at a couple of key U.S. locations, McConnell said that the model concluded that 2 million Americans would certainly die.

"However, when we ran the simulation again, with the benefit of sharing information behind us, the casualties diminished to 16,000."

Dunne described a personal "tour" of world terrorism, highlighting Karachi, Pakistan as "the place that put me most in fear. There were folks there that certainly wanted me dead."

Al-Qaeda is "quietly regrouping," Dunne concluded, giving as his best estimate that the next terror attack - judging by historical factors – would most likely be by conventional means [not germ or chemical] and would most likely focus on an "official target [embassy, ship, etc.]" rather than a "softer" target.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Bioterrorism

War on Terrorism

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