Biden: Bioterrorism more of a threat than missiles

By David Ensor
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Seeking to deflect Congress from President Bush's proposal for a missile defense system, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden said his committee would concentrate on the threat of bioterrorism during the current Congressional session.

VIDEO U.S. Senate Democrats say the Bush administration is off target with its focus on anti-missile systems. CNN's David Ensor reports (September 5) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

"In my view, the threat from anonymously-delivered biological weapons and from emerging infectious diseases simply dwarfs the threat that we will be attacked by a third-world ICBM with a return address," the Delaware Democrat said. "This committee will spend a lot of time" on that issue.

Biden and other senators said the administration's 2002 budget allotment of $182 million for combating bioterrorism was not enough, and called for laws banning the possession of deadly agents such as anthrax, botulism and smallpox.

The panel's ranking Republican, retiring Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, agreed but said "a robust missile defense system" could also prevent attack using a missile armed with a biological weapon.

Former Senator Sam Nunn, a Georgia Democrat who was at one time chairman of the foreign relations committee, told the committee he would put the biological threat to U.S. national security "near the top of the list." Without cooperation with Russian scientists, he said, the danger cannot be significantly reduced.

"We cannot solve it by ourselves," Nunn said, advocating a joint program to be started by President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin "to work together to develop vaccines and other defenses."

Former CIA Director James Woolsey said a biological attack on the United States by terrorists or an enemy state is the most serious threat the nation faces from weapons of mass destruction, in part because the weapons are easy to make and to conceal.

"Often you don't even have to smuggle anything," said Woolsey. "Anthrax grows in many cow pastures in the world and much of the equipment one would need to weaponize it is transportable. Some of it is little more complex than that for, say, a microbrewery attached to a restaurant."