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Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2003

The lawsuit is part of a growing national resistance to the Bush administration's $2.5-billion program to build biodefense labs around the country. United Press International reported in July that the Bush administration now has projects to build or upgrade labs underway through the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A decision by a federal court supporting demands for the reports could result in impact statements being required in several major locales.

The biodefense lab program was ordered after the terrorist attacks in 2001 with the aim of building new labs to look for vaccines and antidotes to deadly biological weapons that terrorists might use. Planners are looking to place many of the labs, like the ones at Livermore, Calif., and Los Alamos, N.M., in or near densely populated areas. To find a vaccine, critics charge, the labs must make small portions of the deadly pathogen and administer it to animals to be sure it works.

The lawsuit, a statement said, "seeks to suspend U.S. Department of Energy work on new buildings designed to conduct biowarfare agent experiments using lethal pathogens, such as anthrax, plague and botulism, at the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National laboratories, pending a comprehensive review of the project's environment impacts."

The lawsuit comes at a time when the Department of Energy has fallen under massive pressure because of the blackout that cut electricity to millions of people in the United States and Canada this month. It is also tasked with following a Bush administration plan to expand nuclear weapons development and has had massive security difficulties.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy said he would try to find out the agency's position on the lawsuit.

The case was filed by Tri-Valley CARES of Livermore and the Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, the legal action also calls for a release of documents sought for years under the Freedom of Information Act, Marylia Kelley of Tri-Valley told UPI.

The two laboratories were the nucleus of the World War II atomic weapons development and still have nuclear weapons functions. There are some 10,000 full-time and contractual employees at each institution.

In addition to labs planned or under construction by government agencies, the NIH is expected next month to issue contracts for building one or two major Bio Safety Level 4 labs at private institutions. One of the applicants for those contracts is the University of California, Davis, about 75 miles north of Livermore, which is proposing to build a $200-million BSL 4 lab. The Livermore and Los Alamos labs, though part of the Department of Energy, are operated by the University of California system.

Most Dangerous Pathogens

BSL 4 labs can contain the most dangerous pathogens and are reserved for work on biological weapons for which there are no cures. Bio Safety Level 3 labs can do much of the same work.

The BSL 3 lab under construction at Los Alamos will be 3,000 square feet and include two Level 3 labs, two mechanical rooms and another lab. The project will be completed this fall and is expected to cost $5 million. A 1,500-square-foot laboratory is planned at Livermore and is expected to be able to conduct aerosol tests on small animals with live bacteriological agents.

Opponents fear there will be an escape of the aerosol or an animal into the outside community, "aerosolizing bioagents cause their accidental release into the environment, as has happened of at Livermore with radioactive materials, " Kelley wrote in a report for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists this month. The CDC has given the Department of Energy the right to work on a range of "select agents," including anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis and a range of hemorrhagic fevers. They also contend that the CDC has given the Department of Energy permission to work on pathogens that may have been genetically altered to make them difficult or impossible to cure.

"Both labs, " Kelley argued in the report, "have caused substantial radiological contamination -- both on site and in surrounding communities. Livermore is on EPA's Superfund list of most contaminated sites in the country, and the New Mexico environmental agency issued a 'corrective action order' to force cleanup at Los Alamos."

The Livermore and Los Alamos labs were criticized by the Department of Energy's inspector general for other shortcomings on environment issues over the past two years.

In addition to environmental difficulties, Livermore and Los Alamos have been severely criticized for security difficulties.

"Examples of security problems at Los Alamos abound," said the report. "The security director resigned under intense pressure last January following management scandals and the sacking of two investigators turned whistle blowers. Still unaccounted for are some 60 missing laptops which could contain classified information. Then there were this June's widely missing vials of plutonium."

Both Livermore and Los Alamos have been directly or indirectly involved in major spy scandals. Los Alamos was the site of the Wen Ho Lee investigation into missing nuclear weapons information.

Meanwhile in Washington, lawyers for Steven J. Hatfill, the man labeled a "person of interest" in the anthrax murder investigation, filed a suit against the government to change its often high-pressure approach to investigating him and wrest an apology for the more than two years he has been under scrutiny.

In Washington, Hatfill's lawyers held a brief news conference in front of the federal court. They said the suit seeks a restraining order from the judge and admission of wrong doing by justice officials, but sets no money damages. Hatfill claims he lost his job and cannot find another one because of news leaks about his alleged role in the sending of anthrax laden letters in the fall of 2001. He has repeatedly said he was innocent.

Copyright, 2003, United Press International

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