Examination of Witnesses (Questions 53-59)
DANIEL FEAKES,
DR. BRIAN
JONES AND
NICHOLAS SIMS
19 NOVEMBER 2008
Q53 Chairman: I apologise for
the delay, gentlemen, which was due to the House having two votes.
I am afraid there is a danger that there will be further votes.
If so, we will have to break and come back. Before we begin, I
ask members of the public to ensure that their mobile phones are
either switched off or on silent mode.
In this sitting, we will focus on chemical and
biological weapons as part of a wider inquiry on proliferation
that we have just begun. We are grateful to the three of you for
coming along and giving us your expertise. Will you please introduce
yourselves for the record?
Nicholas Sims: I am a reader in
international relations at the London School of Economics and
Political Science.
Daniel Feakes: I am a research
fellow at SPRU—science and technology policy research at
the University of Sussex.
Dr. Jones: I am a retired civil
servant, latterly on the Defence Intelligence Staff, and a visiting
research fellow at the University of Southampton.
Q54 Chairman: Let me begin by
asking why far less attention is given to biological and chemical
weapons in the public debate than to nuclear weapons. Does anyone
have a view on why we perceive them as being a lesser threat?
Dr. Jones: The main reason is
probably the familiarity that the public at large have with nuclear
weapons, having seen or heard and read about the effect of their
use in the dramatic way that occurred in Japan at the end of the
second world war. A great number of atmospheric nuclear weapons
tests have been filmed, so it has been very visual. Whilst chemical
weapons have obviously been used, especially in world war one,
their effects are not nearly as great in terms of the number of
casualties and potential casualties from a single use. To all
intents and purposes, biological weapons have never actually been
applied, although my view is that they are possibly the most worrying
of the three.
Daniel Feakes: I would go along
with what Brian has said. It is partly a visual thing. With nuclear
weapons, the image of the mushroom cloud has stayed in people's
imagination for a long time. Chemical weapons have been used,
as Brian said. I think it is also to do with complexity. Nuclear
weapons are very complex. An area such as biological weapons,
which have never been used in warfare, as Brian said, is very
abstract, sometimes. I have listened to people in government and
those who fund our academic research, such as foundations and
research councils, and it is hard for them to understand the concept
of disease being used as a weapon, and that with biological weapons
there would rarely be an identifiable event. You might have people
being infected and presenting with symptoms a week or so later,
but it would be less obvious. It would be more of a public health
event, rather than an explosion and the attendant effects. There
are various reasons for it. It is true that both chemical and
biological weapons have a lesser profile than nuclear weapons.
Q55 Chairman: What is the likelihood
that terrorist groups or even states will be using biological
and chemical weapons in the 21st century?
Nicholas Sims: I do not have any
scientific or technological expertise, but my feeling is that,
because of the very uncertainty about whether the greater threat
comes from states or terrorists, we need to make sure that our
treaty structures are in as good a state of repair as possible.
That is why I feel very devoted to the nurture of the Biological
Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention, because
I have this conviction that they must be made as strong as possible
against a very uncertain threat.
Q56 Chairman: How effective is
this treaty regime when you are dealing with terrorist groups
or people who might acquire these weapons from criminal organisations
by subterfuge, or even be sold them or supplied with them by rogue
states?
Nicholas Sims: My feeling is that
you have to start from treaties, but a great deal depends on the
national implementation of treaties. On the day that the Chemical
Weapons Convention entered into force—29 April 1997—I
was interviewed by Tokyo television and they said, "Well,
what use is this against Aum Shinrikyo?" My answer was, "At
least now, with the Chemical Weapons Convention in force, every
state is obliged, under article 7 of that convention, to enact
penal legislation to take administrative measures to do lots of
surveillance and prevention." That was already required under
article 4 of the Biological Weapons Convention, so you need a
treaty structure, but then you need an enormous amount of national
implementation.
I am very glad that over time, increasing attention
has been given to that side—partly because of perceived
terrorist threats, but also because of the understandable irritation
of countries such as the United Kingdom, which legislated the
Biological Weapons Act 1974 and the Chemical Weapons Act 1996
before ratifying the treaties, to find that not all states have
been that meticulous. Some have gone into the treaty obligation
before making sure that it can be implemented domestically, with
proper legislative authority.
Daniel Feakes: Again, like Nicholas,
I do not have the scientific or technological expertise, or much
expertise in terms of terrorism, either. This sort of debate has
arisen over the past 10 years or so. There are two extremes to
the debate and I would be somewhere in the middle. One extreme
has been particularly apparent in the US, for example, where people
talk about bioterrorism as an existential threat, which we need
something as big as the Manhattan project to combat. Quite a lot
of expensive facilities were built in the US, following that tangent.
Then you have other people saying that the threat has been over-hyped
and overblown—we have the example of Aum Shinrikyo in Japan
that Nicholas mentioned.
That was a religious cult group which had very
large resources and well-trained people. They were not very well
monitored by the Japanese security forces, so they had a really
good environment for being able to do what they wanted to do.
Still, they struggled. They tried biological weapons first and
did not have very much success. They moved to chemical weapons,
with the sarin that they used twice—once in Matsumoto in
1994 and then in Tokyo in 1995. Again, it was not as effective
as they had hoped it would be, even though 12 people died and
quite a few were injured. But a group such as that, with all its
resources, still could not make much of an impact.
I place myself somewhere in between the two
extremes. It is something that you have to be prepared for—you
have to entertain the possibility—but there is the end of
the spectrum where it has been over-hyped and sensationalised
in some ways, and basing policy on over-hyping can lead you down
a path where that has repercussions for your own policy and your
own security as well.
Dr. Jones: My years in intelligence,
and the disciplines there, make me hesitate to use the word "threat"
because it has a very specific meaning. I think of these as potential
threats. I have a gut feeling that the use of one of these weapon
systems by a terrorist organisation is probably more likely than
its use in a major conflict between states that has a very direct
influence on Great Britain.
There is something worth saying and making clear,
whichever of these weapon systems you are thinking about. Daniel
has mentioned the case of Aum Shinrikyo and there was a case of
terrorist use of anthrax in the United States not many years ago.
Neither of those was particularly successful, but perhaps they
are indicative of the sort of problems that terrorists are much
more likely to have in using these systems than a state, if that
state has developed a capability using all its resources. So a
potential threat coming from terrorism is not quite the same as
a potential threat coming from a nation. This is probably quite
an important diference to have in mind. I am not trying to defuse
a very serious threat from a terrorist with any of these systems,
but the sort of potential threat that we are talking about is
probably of a different, lower order, compared to the threat a
state would pose, and that applies to nuclear, biological and
chemical weapons.
Q57 Sir John Stanley: Dr. Jones,
in paragraph 56 of your paper, you say that al-Qaeda "continues
to threaten major attacks against the West and its determination
to acquire biological weapons was confirmed by the discovery of
a dedicated laboratory near Kandahar in Afghanistan in 2001."[4]
Can you tell us, from your background in government, what factors
were driving al-Qaeda to believe that their laboratory work might
end up with a usable biological weapon, which they could use against
those parts of the world and individual countries of whose culture
and behaviour they disapproved? From which sources were they able
to get the basic expertise that they presumably required to get
their laboratory going in the first place?
Dr. Jones: I suspect that I would
have to clear some of the details that you are asking for, but
I can try to give you a good general answer. I think the indications
were that al-Qaeda were trying to achieve in the Kandahar laboratory
the sort of capability that they were pursuing on the chemical
weapons side—that is, to establish a facility where they
could train some of the foot soldiers—the operating terrorists—to
do those things. From the reports that I heard about Kandahar,
the strong suggestion from those who looked at the facility was
that that was the sort of facility that they were seeking. There
were some individuals—I can think of one in particular—who
my staff members in the Defence Intelligence Staff identified.
Again, I would rather not go into the detail of that, but that
individual was pursuing other capabilities, in particular with
anthrax, which is by far the most robust and easiest BW agent
to pursue, albeit not one that nations might move to, because
it has certain limitations. Does that help?
Sir John Stanley: Thank you. If you are
able to get the clearance to give us anything further in writing,
that would be helpful to the Committee.
Q58 Andrew Mackinlay: I listened
to Mr. Feakes, but all of you going through the little history
there of the 20th century seemed to overlook that chemical and
biological weapons were used in a conflict situation by the South
African authorities in Angola and/or Mozambique—I think
I am correct in that. You might want to comment on that. We know
from the record, through the evidence given in the trial of Dr.
Wouter Basson in South Africa and the South African Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, that it was used. I would like to hear
your views.
Also, after listening to you, Dr. Jones, has
that capacity—that intellectual capability—migrated,
been sold or moved on into the kind of things that Sir John was
exploring with you? The Roodeplaat laboratory was deep into this,
was it not? Can all three or any of you comment?
Dr. Jones: From what I understood
of the situation in South Africa, Basson seemed to be primarily
interested in fairly selective and directed use of infectious
materials and poisons, to target—according to the evidence—individuals
and small groups, rather than a widespread use. That was the main
thrust, from what I recall. I am a bit hazy there. I might check
that and look back, but it seems to me that those were the sort
of approaches he made.
That Basson's activities were covert and targeted
in this way illustrates something relevant to any terrorist-type
activity. (I hasten to add that I am not an expert on terrorism.
This is just thinking about the issues that I have followed and,
if you like, transferring that thinking.) The illustration applies,
to a certain extent, to nations as well. There are key ideas and
individuals, rather than a broad-brush acquisition of simply the
technical capability. The technical capability, particularly with
biological and chemical, is not that hard to come by to develop
the agents and the materials. It is the ideas of how you use them
and how you can disseminate them that will be useful at the terrorist
level—that is the key. It is very difficult to predict when
individuals with such expertise and ideas will suddenly surface
and be available to a group of terrorists, I think.
Q59 Andrew Mackinlay: Have your
colleagues got anything to say?
Daniel Feakes: I have colleagues
and people I know in South Africa who have worked closely with
and followed the TRC—they followed the Basson trial and
things like that—so they know a lot more about it than I
do. My understanding, as Brian said, is that those uses were fairly
targeted. There was a lot of work on so-called non-lethal weapons
by the South Africans, also very targeted, such as assassination
weapons. I am not that sure myself on the full scope and nature
of their programmes.
That illustrates something else about chemical
and biological weapons—through history they have largely
been used as weapons of sabotage and assassination. In some ways
what we have seen during the 20th century is an aberration from
the history of chemical and biological weapons through the centuries.
With the South African programme, as I understand it, either the
UK and the US went to South Africa or there was some kind of involvement
in the early 1990s, on an official level, to make sure that the
programme had been closed down and that whatever it was that the
South Africans did have had been disposed of. As I understand
it, that did happen. It is an interesting question: where do the
knowledge and the people with the know-how go?
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