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October 13, 2003
Come and get it!
Last week, ABC News.com reported on a General Accounting Office (GAO) report showing that Pentagon was selling equipment suitable for use in creating biological weapons at "bargain" prices through a surplus equipment website.
According to the report, which is due to be released today and discussed in a hearing of the House Government Reform subcommittee on national security, Congress ordered the GAO — its investigative arm — to set up a phony company to see how easy it would be to buy surplus lab equipment from the Pentagon.To make matters worse, some of the equipment was then resold to people in Egypt, Malaysia and the Philippines, places from which terrorists have been known to work.Using fake names, GAO investigators went to a Web site that sells Pentagon surplus and ordered items needed to produce bacteriological weapons, including evaporators, centrifuges, bacteriological incubators and protective clothing.
In its report, the GAO found that the "Department of Defense has not attempted to determine who is buying excess biological equipment or how these items were being used."
Oddly (or perhaps not), this story has received little coverage. I found a few foreign papers carrying it, but no major US sites other than ABC. A couple of the other stories, though, had interesting tidbits. Reuters noted potential problems with defective protective suits.
But the GAO said it was able to buy hundreds of older Battle Dress Overgarments, some from defective lots the department had been trying to get out of circulation for several years.And the Guardian commented on a particularly ironic aspect of the story:Almost 5,000 defective suits may have been issued to state and local law enforcement agencies, it said.
"Vague recall notices by the Defense Logistics Agency mean some first responders may still be relying on protective gear that won't work," Shays said.
The news is particularly embarrassing, coming only days after the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group claimed the discovery of similar equipment in Iraq was evidence that the Saddam Hussein regime had a covert weapons programme.Of course, the Defense Logistics Agency that handles the surplus goods from the Pentagon has promised to study what they need to do to help keep potential terrorists from getting their hands on such equipment and are taking steps to let people know if they've purchased potentially defective gear.
Posted by thorswitch at October 13, 2003 10:41 PM
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