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Hack's Target For The Week:

The Sum of My Biggest Fear

By David H. Hackworth

Remember the good old days when we had thousands of Soviet nuclear-tipped missiles pointed at us? Looking back, it wasn't too hard living with the Machiavellian strategy of mutually assured destruction that kept both superpowers from pushing their doomsday buttons: Vacationing in sunny Florida sure beat surviving a nuclear winter.

The Sovs might be history, but their nuclear missiles are still around - without their well-trained Soviet security forces. Today, thousands of warheads are stored in run-down depots devoid of electric power because the Russian military is too broke to pay the bills.

A recent report notes that the front gates of some of these "nuclear storage facilities" are secured by flimsy bicycle locks and patrolled by guards more into vodka than vigilance, and who are so poorly paid they'd sell anything on site to the highest bidder.

Russian and U.S. intelligence have both reported that since the end of the Cold War, at least 164 highly transportable former Soviet nuclear warheads have gone south. A retired Soviet general and a former defense minister confirmed this report.

A federal report stated that nearly two years ago, "[Osama] Bin Laden allegedly has already purchased a number of nuclear suitcase bombs from the Chechen Mafia." In addition, there've been numerous busts of smugglers moving nuke devices or weapons-grade material in Europe, the former Soviet Union republics and Southwest Asia.

The same federal report said, "Following the August 1998 (U.S.) cruise missile attack, (an Islamic religious leader) stated 'the time is not far off' when the White House will be destroyed by a nuclear bomb. A horrendous scenario consonant with al Qaeda's mind-set would be its use of a nuclear suitcase bomb against any number of targets in the nation's capital."

Even our CIA, with a track record that's recently been worse than a three-legged plug's at the Kentucky Derby, fears the missing nukes are probably in the hands of Osama bin Laden or other international terrorist types who've sworn on stacks of Korans to destroy the Great Satan - aka you-know-who. No big stretch, since everyone gets that weapons of mass destruction have been at the top of al Qaeda's shopping list for at least several years.

I've been on my soapbox preaching about such a strike for more than a decade. Now in the movie The Sum of All Fears, Hollywood portrays the worst-case scenario I've been worrying about if a nuclear weapon were to fall into the wrong hands. This frighteningly prescient flick was in the works long before Sept. 11. Swap "crazed South Africans who hate the USA" for "crazed Moslem terrorists who share their passion," stick a nuke device in a pickup truck, and we're talking Sum's scary story line.

The possibility of a nuclear, bio or chemical attack on the USA increases with the passing of each day. For example, more than 6 million cargo containers arrive annually in our ports, and less than 2 percent are physically inspected. Terrorists could easily bring in not just the entire 164 missing A-bombs, but a mini-nuclear factory to set up across from the White House - or in an apartment building near you!

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, must have also previewed the movie, since he recently started the ball rolling to install state-of-the-art radiation detectors on a high-priority basis at all U.S. border crossings and on all cranes that move cargo containers at U.S. ports. These sophisticated new detectors can both spot nukes through truck and container walls and recognize the difference between radiation from weapons and other types of radiation sources.

Homeland Security analyst Paul Purcell, who wants to go one step further, calls for the setting up of "offshore inspection sites to check ships out before they enter our ports." He's dead right when he says, "You don't screen airline passengers for weapons after they have already boarded the aircraft, and it's too late if you inspect ships sitting in our ports waiting to go boom."

Washington has to get off its slow-moving bureaucratic butt before art anticipates reality and we find ourselves knocked flat and radiated by the fanatics who aim to destroy this great land and all it stands for.

Bet on it - in this long war against international terrorism, the possibility of ending up fried and glowing for 250,000 years is not just a Paramount Pictures fantasy.

http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179, Greenwich, CT 06831. And look for his new book, "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts" (Rugged Land LLC).

© 2002 David H. Hackworth

By Ed Offley

The day after Pearl Harbor, it is said, the old War Department building in Washington, D.C. reeked of mothballs.

It is a vignette from the past that the Bush administration and Congress ought to study very hard.

Why mothballs? Throughout the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. military leaders discouraged personnel serving in the nation's capitol from wearing their uniforms, out of a genteel concern that the presence of so many soldiers in the city might upset their civilian counterparts.

As historian Geoffrey Perrett recounted in There's a War to Be Won, his history of the U.S. Army in World War II, one of the first orders issued by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson after the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, was for military people to get our their uniforms and start wearing them again: the nation was at war, and the hallways reeked of mothballs.

Eight months after the terrorist attacks, much has happened: The United States and its allies dislodged the Taliban in Afghanistan, mounted a worldwide intelligence-gathering operation aimed at unearthing al Qaeda terrorist cells and disrupting their operations, and launched military counter-terrorism training and assistance missions in more than a half-dozen other countries. Efforts to boost Homeland Security are underway. We will reach another milestone of recovery from the disaster on Thursday, when workers remove the last steel piling from the fallen World Trade Center towers.

But in several important areas, the government appears to be operating as if 9-11 never happened.

As the newspaper USA Today noted in an editorial today, a number of key federal agencies have failed to carry out critical post-attack security measures. The Agriculture Department immediately ordered a security review of more than 300 laboratories that possess materials that could be used in a terrorist biological attack, but an internal audit in March found that most of the problems had yet to be addressed. The Energy Department's ongoing review of computer vulnerability to cyber-attacks is far from complete. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, whose congenital incompetence assured that the 9-11 hijackers would never be interrupted as they planned their attacks from within the United States, has again been criticized - for failing to fully cooperate with the Social Security Administration over checking the status of immigrants.

To that we can add the Crusader Alliance, a coven of U.S. Army traditionalists, defense contractors and their tame congressmen who insist on ramming an $18 billion howitzer into production despite the small fact that it is too heavy to fly to Afghanistan or any other of the dozens of regions where we will probably fight wars in the future.

But the prime example of inertia and sloth must go to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose headquarters staff actively resisted and even sabotaged the frantic efforts by the FBI Minneapolis Field Office to secure a national security search warrant after the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui on Aug. 15, 2001 - nearly a full four weeks before the terrorist hijackers struck. In an angry and impassioned letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller last Tuesday, Special Agent Coleen Rowley, the FBI general counsel in Minneapolis, recounted in damning detail how "careerists" at FBI headquarters had blocked every move her office had made to obtain what they (correctly) suspected was evidence of an imminent terrorist attack. And this obstruction even continued after the World Trade Center and Pentagon were struck on Sept. 11! Rowley wrote:

DefenseWatch has posted on this website an excerpted text of Special Agent Rowley's letter, which was originally obtained by Time magazine.

The Bush administration has doggedly refused to seek an independent blue-ribbon investigation into the causes of the al Qaeda attacks and to hold officials accountable for any lapses in judgment or action that may have materially contributed to that massive intelligence failure. Until the Rowley letter leaked, it was possible to ascribe the administration's opposition as sincere - albeit debatable - on grounds that the administration sincerely feared of inadvertent information disclosure might cause harm in the war against terrorism.

Suspending accountability for the duration of the war is one thing. But allowing those responsible (however indirectly) for the intelligence failure preceding 9-11 to hold down key jobs in the prosecution of the ongoing war is a far different thing - an act of recklessness that borders on the criminal.

The FBI has announced a major reorganization to improve its ability to go after terrorists. But the agency's track record since before 9-11 has so damaged its credibility that any internal reforms will instantly come under suspicion as merely self-serving or ineffective.

President Bush has pledged to do "whatever it takes" to win the war against terrorism. But by presiding over a government paralyzed by careerists and self-perpetuating bureaucrats, Mr. Bush is setting himself - and all of us - up for setbacks and failures we cannot afford. It is time for the reek of mothballs.

Consider this: Adm. Husband Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter Short were responsible for the security of Pearl Harbor, and were sacked 10 days after the Japanese attack. Having correctly identified the strand of the 9-11 conspiracy a month before the attacks, Special Agent Coleen Rowley has formally requested "Whistleblower protection" on the assumption that her 21-year FBI career will be wrecked because of bureaucratic retaliation stemming from her letter to the FBI director. And what of the unnamed Supervisory Special Agent at FBI headquarters who allegedly delayed, obfuscated and tampered with Rowley's formal request for a search warrant against Moussaoui even as the WTC towers were falling down?

He got promoted.

Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com.

Editor's Note: See related article below, "Growing Anger Over U.S. Intelligence System Failure," by Contributing Editor John M. Szelog.

First of three parts

By Donald Vandergriff

With the United States committed to a global war against terrorism that will probably last for years, debate over the effectiveness of the armed forces has intensified in the Pentagon, Congress and the news media. Unfortunately, it is wrongfully focused on weapons and command-and-control systems while ignoring the critical issue of maintaining a combat-effective force through effective management of the officers and enlisted personnel who have to do the fighting.

It is my belief that even before developing space-age weapons and communications systems that comprise the so-called "Revolution in Military Affairs," the Defense Department and uniformed services should undertake what I call the "Revolution in Human Affairs" - a transformation of the antiquated personnel management systems in place today that threaten to weaken and dilute the effectiveness of our combat units.

More than anything else, what will guarantee our victory in this difficult war is success in creating and sustaining strong "esprit de corps" throughout the various military commands and units that deploy to distant battlefields. In this and two subsequent articles, I hope to demonstrate how the little-studied area of personnel management holds a key to transformation of the U.S. military into a far more effective fighting force, at a cost far below that of simply buying more advanced weapons.

First, let's look at how other armies have promoted morale and fighting spirit in the past.

The classic embodiment of esprit de corps is the British Army's regimental system. While the regiment, with between 750-1,000 soldiers in its ranks, was always too large for an individual soldier to personally know everyone else - except after a long time in the unit - they generated immense attachment, loyalty, instant mutual recognition and trust, and lifelong acknowledgement of this identity, creating cohesion.

Once cohesion and trust are fulfilled the unit is on the road to excellence - the mastery of complex wartime unit tasks. As a result, agility becomes second nature to the unit, which in turns increases the options available to commanders. This in turn increases the commander's decisiveness.

Personnel systems are defined as individual-based or unit-based with variations of both. Those nations that conduct what is called maneuver warfare or 3rd Generation warfare employ unit-based systems. These systems can be further divided into three types: the regimental system, a regionally- or nationally-based system, and the "Swiss" personnel system.

The most well known is the British Regimental system that came into being under Oliver Cromwell in 1644, where local British regions were responsible for providing regiments to a national but decentralized army. Each regiment includes several field battalions and a depot, with the latter unit responsible for recruiting, training - socializing - and transferring regimental levies to the deployed battalions for replacements. These regiments historically have showed great pride and were stalwart against an array of threats in the last three centuries. Throughout modern British history the strength of the regiment - particularly its NCO cadre and unit cohesion - more than compensated for the lack of professionalism in the British officer corps.

However, British regiments at the same time have been very poor in their ability to cooperate and communicate with neighboring infantry units and other branches of the army (e.g. armor). This directly stemmed from the way they practiced cohesion and esprit. Lack of trust and communication with fellow British infantry battalions in the field led to the habit of very sharp unit boundaries and prohibition of initiatives that would cross those boundaries. Until the post-World War II era, regimental officers tended to stay confined to their units, resulting in limited operational and strategic initiative and imagination in carrying out the war efforts.

Up to and during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Swiss personnel system defined Israeli military effectiveness. The Israelis relied on a small professional army to buy time at the outset of war, but just importantly, to train the reserves. The background of the Israeli system was its ready reserve system, where units revolved around local communities and where crews and platoons stayed together for years, ensuring unit cohesion.

More importantly, the Israelis could maintain a ready army at little cost to their small nation. Today, the Israelis employ parts of two systems, both an IRS and the Swiss system.

The Germans employed a regional personnel system that evolved from Frederick the Great's day and was institutionalized under Gerhard Scharnhorst after the Prussian defeat at Jena. This system was capitalized and expanded in the mid-1800s by the German general staff into an army that could rapidly transition from peace to war. While the German general staff provided the brains to focus on war plans and mobilization, it was left to several geographical corps districts to raise, train and sustain units (and officers).

With their well-known reputation for efficiency, the German army insisted on policies that supported unit cohesion. In World War I and World War II the Germans maintained a large pool of divisions (with less overhead and logistical support than other western armies) for the purpose of rotating units. When units became combat ineffective, they were rotated back to the homeland to be rebuilt and retrained. The new division would take in replacements from the same region with the new soldiers trained by a cadre of veterans. The unit would then rotate back to the front with little or no diminishment in its effectiveness. As a result, units maintained a high degree of combat effectiveness. For example, during World War II, the Germans inflicted four casualties for every one they suffered.

In sum, all three military personnel systems provided for units that were generally effective in combat, although the British weakness in operating with other battalions because of the lack of "trust" from one regiment to another hampered the army's combined-arms capability. The Israeli system satisfied the regional requirements and short-term life dictated by economic and geographical factors unique to that country.

However, the German system, open to a larger population, was more adaptive to combined arms and engendered a "trust" across the entire army that made it the most effective system for creating and sustaining military combat units.

Next: A brief history of U.S. military personnel management.

Vandergriff is a Contributing Editor to DefenseWatch, and is author of "Path to Victory: America's Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs" (Presidio Press). He can be reached at vandergriffdonald@usa.net.

By Mark R. Lewis

Recently, the Army announced its decision to reduce the time-in-grade requirement of lieutenants for promotion to captain to 38 months. This is the latest move in an effort to address the Army's continuing critical shortage of captains, and is part of trend that has brought the time-in-grade requirement steadily downward from 54 months in the mid-1990s.

It is a shortsighted solution that will exacerbate the very problem it is trying to address while mortgaging an Army dependent upon well-trained, highly competent officers to face the complex threats of a future battlefield.

Standing on the brink of transformation, the Army is short thousands of captains. Captains are pivotal. They are the commanders closest to the troops in garrison, training and combat. Yet the number of captains leaving the Army has doubled over the last several years. Even in the face of the struggling economy of 2001, when unemployment skyrocketed and 2.4 million Americans lost their jobs, the attrition rate did not slow by even one percent. This is a concern not only because of the current demand for manpower, but also because those captains are the senior commanders of the future.

The Army's solution for the captain shortage is clear: promote them earlier, promote more of them, and commission more new officers to make into captains as fast as they can. Besides time-in-grade reductions, promotion rates to captain have increased until they are now nearly 100 percent. Furthermore, in the later half of the 1990s, the Army opened the spigot and commissioned hundreds more officers than they needed; by mid-2001 they had more than three thousand surplus lieutenants swelling the ranks.

The Army acknowledges that low job satisfaction is a driving factor for captains leaving the service, but has ironically adopted a solution that will aggravate the problem. Young officers clearly express that less time with troops is a strong indicator that officership was not what they thought it was and thus a prime motivator to seek a new career.

Yet, in an effort to make captains faster, the Army will reduce troop time even more. The Army is locked in this self-perpetuating loop. Making more captains quicker is a misleading statistical game. The Army may fill those vacant captain positions but the fill is the very definition of fodder.

A RAND study recently found that over the decade of the 90s, there was a 50-percent reduction in annual training opportunities for junior officers. Link this decline to faster promotion to captain and you'll find a dramatic compounding effect. Every new officer must shuffle through lieutenant jobs to gain needed experience before promotion. Since each lieutenant spends the better part of his or her first year or more at their basic school, promotion to captain is coming sooner, and there are more lieutenants than jobs, that shuffle is getting faster and faster. Factor in a peacekeeping deployment, and some lieutenants never train on their combat-related mission-essential tasks before promotion.

The second-order effect is that complex, collective task training suffers Army-wide. Enlisted soldiers and non-commissioned officers bring the new lieutenant almost up to speed just in time to start all over again. Battalion commanders, charged with developing these officers, resort to less-demanding training events and more restrictive control measures.

This decline in experience carries over into the battalion and brigade staffs as displaced lieutenants fill vacant captain positions and produces a "bow wave" of inexperience that never goes away. And this "bow wave" will carry these young officers straight into important future command positions in the Objective Force.

Commonly cited as a cause of the continuing hemorrhage of captains from the Army is the loss of trust between junior and senior officers. When the Army issues a news release that lists a number of general officers - including the Army Chief of Staff - who were promoted to captain at 24 months during Vietnam, they are underscoring that rift.

Junior officers are smart enough to see a link between the Army's faster promotions to captain during Vietnam and the loss of captains in Vietnam, and the general relationship between combat losses of all ranks and leader inexperience. The legacy of Vietnam for this generation of platoon leaders and company commanders is the suspicion that there is more than one name on The Wall as a result of a young officer in over his head. They are rightly determined to avoid it and cannot understand why their generals - who should know better - are using a wartime, stop-gap measure that produced questionable results as justification for a peacetime policy.

Comparisons to Vietnam - and consequently the bonds of trust - also suffer when these young officers read Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki's own White Paper on the Concepts for the Objective Force. In this blueprint for Army transformation, the Army makes it clear that the battlefield of 2005 will be quite different from the battlefield of 1965 and will place a tremendous burden on the Army's tactical leaders.

Any dictionary tells us that experience is the "active participation in events or activities, leading to the accumulation of knowledge or skill." When officers move rapidly through the ranks - as is happening right now - they have fewer chances to fully learn the basic skills that form the foundation of further development.

Battlefield complexity is increasing as junior officer experience is decreasing. This makes no sense.

Lewis works for a nonprofit research institution in Washington, D.C. He served over 10 years as an active-duty infantryman with the U.S. Army including two tours as both an NCO and officer with the 2d Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. He can be reached at lewismarkr75@hotmail.com. © Mark R. Lewis 2002.

By J. David Galland

The British Ministry of Defence recently completed a two-year study on women in the military, and last week its findings led Defence Secretary Geoffrey W. Hoon to continue the prohibition of female soldiers from serving in infantry and armor units.

The study concluded that the presence of women in combat units could undermine unit cohesion and would create a risk for the individual soldiers as well. The findings further stated that women should not be allowed to serve on the front line because military commanders believe it might stop soldiers from following orders in the heat of battle.

Noting the small size of ground combat units and the unrelenting mental and physical pressure faced by soldiers that can continue for weeks at a time, the British study honestly recognized this unique role that stands apart from other military positions. In ground combat units soldiers are, and must be, subjected to intense discipline designed to make them ready to follow any order - immediately and without question - even if it means the likelihood of death.

The Ministry of Defence study concluded that it could not predict with certainty the impact on infantry and armor units from introducing women into their ranks. Secretary Hoon affirmed on May 22 that he was not prepared to risk the effectiveness of front-line infantry and armored combat teams in the absence of any hard evidence that allowing women to serve in such units would increase their capabilities. Women in the British military will be allowed to serve in 70 percent of all army roles, but they will be kept out of units that must "close with the enemy."

Adm. Sir Michael Boyce, Chief of the British Defence Staff, echoed his superior, saying that allowing women into front-line combat roles would be an "irresponsible experiment."

What a novel concept! The British military has demonstrated its insistence that top priority must go for combat readiness - the ability of its units, to deploy, maneuver, seize and hold terrain, and kill the adversary. Unit effectiveness, mission accomplishment and force sustainment take priority over political correctness and a contemporary social ideology that may be fine in the corporate world but can severely impair a military operation.

The British decision comes in sharp contrast to the U.S. military, which remains hobbled by equal-opportunity regulations and programs for women that undercut both morale and combat effectiveness.

Naturally the Liberal Democrats and the British Equal Opportunities Commission have challenged Adm. Boyce, Secretary Mr. Hoon, and anyone else so bold as to differ with their beliefs that equality for women should be the top priority, even with the British Army currently fighting the war against international terrorism.

Meanwhile, American forces continue to be coerced, threatened, and forced by liberal watchdog groups to open up all jobs to women. Even the current U.S. ban against women serving in infantry, armor and special forces units is being continually challenged by women's equality advocates through political pressure asserting that any career field that still excludes women is discriminatory and biased.

The findings of the British study offered significant factual evidence to support continuing the ban. Most women performed significantly worse than men in key physical tests. Women were also found to also have a considerably reduced capacity for aggression, although the study team thought this could possibly be altered "given sufficient social license and provocation."

The British study findings prompt an urgent question: Will this encourage other countries to re-examine the current roles of women in their armies?

Perhaps so, but in the United States, a powerful, firmly entrenched feminist political movement retains the ability to exert political pressure on the Defense Department. Within the U.S. military itself, anyone who advocates re-examining or possibly restricting female roles in opposition to the snowballing momentum of gender equality, has signed his or her own career death warrant.

It seems likely that the U.S. military - particularly the U.S. Army - will continue with its "equality at any price" philosophy, even at the cost of declining recruitment, retention, reenlistments and quality of the force. This is a troubling situation that appears to be getting worse by the day. The U.S. Army today is as shorthanded as I have ever seen it. Recruitment goals are not being reached as anticipated. The expected upsurge of those hustling to enlist after 9-11 never happened.

Sen. Max Cleland, D-GA, a U.S. Army veteran who suffered severe combat injuries in Vietnam, has called for an expansion of the active force by more aggressive recruiting approaches and incentives. Cleland is preparing to submit his third try at changing the federal law that capped the total number of Americans who may serve in uniform. It's a noble effort but misses the key issue.

I have spoken with numerous Army recruiters and what I am hearing is not encouraging. One senior noncommissioned officer, whom I have known for almost twenty years, told me that the "female-friendly" Army is becoming less attractive to young men. He explained that in his experience, young men who seek to define and project their masculinity, and work in a macho-type environment, have lost the main incentive to ascribe to a military lifestyle.

My friend's concern was underscored recently by Gunnery Sgt. Jack Harrington, a Marine Corps recruiter in Orange County, Calif. Harrington and I struck up a conversation at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport a few weeks ago. The seasoned Marine told me that he has a steady stream of eager young men coming into his office. Gunnery Sgt. Harrington said he is convinced that it is the Marines' traditional, "macho" way of doing things that attracts most of the young men he has recruited.

There is a very important lesson for the top Pentagon leadership contained in both the British study of combat effectiveness, and in the growing concerns voiced by seasoned U.S. military NCOs everywhere: With our nation in a wartime fight for its survival, we can no longer afford to use the armed forces as a laboratory for social engineering.

J. David Galland, Deputy Editor of DefenseWatch, is a retired veteran of over thirty years of service in military intelligence who resides in Germany. He can be reached at defensewatch02@yahoo.com.

By Patrick Hayes

American troops are engaged in battle - again. This time they have been assignment to go into the Afghan highlands near the Pakistani border and finish the job, wherever that may take them - as long as it is not across the politically sensitive Pakistani border. The question is, will the politicians get out of the way this time, or will American fighting men be hampered as ground and air forces were in Vietnam?

Although certain targets were acceptable in North Vietnam, for over ten years the U.S. government did not allow its military ground forces to enter the North (officially) across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Army and Marine ground forces chased Viet Cong cadres and main force North Vietnamese Army units around South Vietnam, trying to catch the elusive enemy in the open and deliver a decisive blow. Much of the time, when they weren't deep within their hidden bunker complexes, the latter would disappear over the border into Cambodia, Laos, or back across the DMZ dissecting the two Vietnams. Likewise, Air Force and Navy pilots were restricted as to the targets they could hit.

In many cases, intel and military planners knew where the enemy forces were - just across the invisible border - but nothing could be done because of political restrictions. It recent weeks, we have seen a similar situation in western Pakistan. There, rabid Islamic fundamentalists, including al Qaeda terrorists, the former Afghan Taliban fighters, and possibly Osama bin Laden himself, are sitting snug and content in their mountain retreats in the Federally Administered Tribal Lands of Pakistan - knowing full well that the American and allied forces cannot and will not come after them. The question is, why not?

Of all the Monday-morning quarterbacking that went on following the war in Vietnam, crossing borders in pursuit of the enemy and bombing certain "untouchable" targets in North Vietnam, were probably the most obvious. Had U.S. ground forces been given a green light to take the war to the enemy in the "denied" areas a lot sooner, areas where the enemy felt safe, things may have been a great deal different and the war could have ended a lot sooner, possibly saving many lives, particularly American lives. Even when President Richard Nixon ordered troops to cross into Cambodia late in the war to hit and kill the enemy in their staging and supply areas, he came under incredible political pressure for "expanding the war."

The same is true in western Pakistan. Either we are at war with the same type of murderous Islamic fanatics who flew planes into civilian-occupied buildings, or we're not. Either we search out and destroy the enemy wherever he is, or we do not. Either, as President George Bush has said, nation states are with us, or they are with the terrorists. There is no middle ground in a war against single-minded fanatics and terrorists.

In the case of western Pakistan on the Afghan border, the Pakistani government of Pervez Musharraf is shying away from allowing western troops into the region to search and destroy the al Qaeda and Taliban support network that is still very active there. Adding to the problem, Musharraf has stated he will pull troops out of the region to send them to the looming conflict with India along the disputed Kashmir border (see "Kashmir: The Hidden Trigger for an Asian Nuclear War," DefenseWatch, Feb. 20, 2002). Although Pakistani troops seem to have done very little to actually reduce al Qaeda activities in western Pakistan - which has been more of a media campaign rather than a military one - their withdrawal from the border region will give virtual free reign to al Qaeda terrorists.

So, do the U.S. troops, as the president initially stated, go after the terrorists wherever they find them, or will the administration continue to play geopolitical games with a shaky Islamic regime (with nuclear weapons), while constantly worried about offending our other Islamic "allies" who support our enemies while speaking out of both sides of their mouths? At the same time, we watch as the Pakistani-Indian conflict over Kashmir heats up to nuclear proportions.

Yes, it would be prudent to "protect" Musharraf's regime in the short term, given his apparent support of U.S. operations in Afghanistan. However, it is more than necessary to protect the United States, its citizens and interests. And to do so, in a case of clear and present danger under national security guidelines, it is past time to take off the political gloves and go into western Pakistan to do what should have been done on Day One of the war against terrorism in Afghanistan - destroy al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, anyone else who wishes to step up to plate of Islamic fanaticism, and their infrastructure.

U.S. intelligence probably knows exactly where these people are located in the Parachinar, Kara Khel, Bassu, and Firoz Khel region. The military will is there to go get the job done. What we seem to be lacking is the political will. Like the Middle East, there is a delicate balance of power to be considered - a balance maybe more critical due to the ongoing conflict over Kashmir, instigated by Muslim terrorists against India's control of two thirds of the Kashmir region - between two nuclear states.

However, we are in a war with the same Muslim terrorists who threaten peace and stability not only in Afghanistan and Kashmir, but also in Chechnya, Bosnia, the Middle East generally, in Africa, including Algeria, Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria, the Philippines, and a nuclearized Iran. There are many more cells around the world, including within the United States and Canada. These conflicts are not individual in nature, but are battlefields of a fundamentalist Islamic war against the West.

American and allied forces have come under sporadic ambushes and murderous suicidal attacks by the Islamic fanatics, most of whom then rush back to the safety of western Pakistan (apparently not that willing to go to Allah and the virgins when reality and American firepower strike back). The primary lesson we should have learned from Vietnam is that we cannot fight a war this way.

As a superpower with certain obligations, not to mention that we are responding to a murderous attack by these Muslim fanatics, there is only so much we can do to appease the American Left, but whatever is done by the government will be wrong, according to them, so why bother? The European Left will attack U.S. policies, whatever we do as well, so it really shouldn't be part of the equation.

The region is a chessboard, to be sure, with many pitfalls, tripwires and multilayered considerations when making a move. However, the reality remains the same: There is no negotiating with Muslim terrorists. We must fight to win and there is no acceptable second place in this war.

Patrick Hayes is a contributing editor to DefenseWatch. He can be reached at gyrene@sftt.us.

By John M. Szelog

The news media has been awash recently with anonymously leaked reports about the failure to identify intelligence indicators that could have prevented or lessened the impact of the 9-11 attacks.

Much of the failure has been attributed to lack of coordination and infighting between the various intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Included in these problems were the compartmentalization of the intelligence agencies and their assets.

Hearing all of this, a glaring inconsistency emerged: Remember when senior FBI counter-intelligence agent Robert Hanssen was arrested early last year (he subsequently was indicted for, and pled guilty to multiple charges of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia)?

The 21-count indictment against Hanssen listed, by generic description for security purposes, the various information and documents that he allegedly passed to the Soviets/Russians. These documents include material from the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, including nuclear war plans, communications intelligence operations, classified briefings on intelligence shortcomings, counter-intelligence operations being conducted in the United States, the identities of KGB/SVR and other foreign intelligence agents who had been recruited by U.S. agencies, and post-nuclear attack emergency plans.

Hanssen should never have had any access to the vast majority of this information. As a counter-intelligence agent, he certainly may have had a need to know the basic information, but he had no need to know the sources and methods. The compartmentalization of the intelligence services and assets is supposed to prevent any one person from gaining access to that information. In this case, the security system failed completely.

But the Hanssen case presents a very troubling conundrum regarding the intelligence failure preceding the 9-11 attacks. Now, we are told, that same compartmentalization helped to prevent the various intelligence and law enforcement agencies from communicating with each other in a timely manner.

So the question is this: How is it that one man can illegally gain access to multiple, unrelated compartmentalized programs, including nuclear war plans, yet, multiple intelligence and law enforcement agencies, operating legally, can't manage to get a number of related intelligence documents to the right people?

Hanssen was one man, and he risked being caught, so he had to operate very stealthily and unobtrusively within the intelligence system. The intelligence and law enforcement agencies working prior to 9-11 had multiple personnel, and could operate, obtain necessary information, and transmit information to other agencies openly within the intelligence system.

It appears obvious that there has been a huge failure in the intelligence system. The issue that now comes up is whether the failure was deliberate, or because the system failed. Of course, there will be many conspiracy theories. There always are in a situation like this, but in this case, a conspiracy theory presents itself as being more of a possibility for one reason: The alternative is that the U.S. intelligence system, and/or the law enforcement agencies that use that intelligence, failed completely and miserably.

The people responsible for failing to detect the 9-11 conspirators need to be identified and severely reprimanded. This includes, if the evidence warrants it, members of Congress, who have a habit of meddling in affairs in which they have no knowledge or business.

Of particular interest at this time is to determine who is responsible for the ban on terrorist profiling that existed on 9-11. It is possible that something as utterly stupid as the fear of being accused of profiling could have been all that stood in the way of preventing the terrorist attacks. Another obvious target is the long track record of infighting and distrust that characterized relations among the various U.S. intelligence agencies.

Regardless, it has all got to stop, and the whole system must be straightened out. The safety and security of this nation and its citizens were jeopardized because a group of people with the largest budget and greatest access to resources in the history of mankind couldn't get their act together.

I encourage all of the dedicated, hard-working field agents out there who struggle to perform in such a bureaucratic jungle, to keep up the hard work, and keep pushing the information up. If somebody in the middle, or at the top is blocking information, take the example of FBI agent Coleen Rowley, who responded to higher-ups who blocked her attempt to get a search warrant against accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui several weeks before 9-11: blow the whole thing, go public. Her letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, obtained by Time magazine, is a testament to effective service thwarted by an inept, fearful bureaucracy.

I also advise all of those who were involved in creating this whole mess, whether deliberate or not, to start looking for a new identity, and tickets out of this country. With this information coming out, and more attacks on the U.S. mainland a very real possibility, public tolerance of idiocy, incompetence, and worst of all, inaction by the government, is going to get very short.

John M. Szelog is a Contributing Editor to DefenseWatch. He can be reached at streetgang52@hotmail.com.

By Andrea West

In the past two weeks a great deal has happened on the international scene to suggest that the alliance against terrorism is faring better than many critics fear.

President George W. Bush made a brilliant speech to the German Bundestag on May 23 and followed it up with a remarkable mission to Russia and a Memorial Day speech at Normandy that recalled the historic alliance between Europe and America. Meanwhile, the remaining Taliban leaders claim that Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden are still alive, and that more attacks are coming. Vice President Dick Cheney issued new dire warnings about terror attacks, and the debate about threats to civil liberties continued.

Some recent events also suggest that a few recalcitrant states may be quietly coming around to the U.S. way of thinking, whereas others, presumably more allied to the United States, are now showing reservations about the war on terror. One of the states that may be turning around and showing signs of cooperation is Iran.

According to the Pakistani newspaper, The Balochistan Post, Iran border authorities arrested 33 Pakistanis who may have been aiding Al Qaeda, if they were not Al Qaeda members themselves. The independent commercial intelligence company Stratfor.com indicates that this is an unusual situation. While Iran is a stopover for drug smugglers bringing drugs into the Persian Gulf, the usual practice is for Iran to jail and eventually execute anyone caught smuggling drugs. The Guardian newspaper of London concurs, reporting that Al Qaeda members paid up to $25,000 to be smuggled out of Pakistan, and that Iranian security service members may have aided them.

Stratfor.com reported on May 23 that Iran's recent behavior indicates a more cooperative stance toward Washington, complete with face-to-face discussions in Cyprus. While not toning down the public rhetoric, it would seem that the Iranian government is willing to negotiate, privately and unobtrusively.

Not all nations are going to come around so easily. Remember Syria, full-time arms smuggler and erstwhile sponsor of terrorism? According to Stratfor.com, this nation may be a source of friction between the United States and the European Union. Some European companies have started doing business in Syria, under the auspices of an EU policy of economic rapprochement. This leaves Washington with two choices: either follow suit and start trade with Syria, which still leaves American companies at a disadvantage relative to the European companies, or impose sanctions and be at loggerheads with the EU and its desire to protect its lucrative trade.

Some of our friends across the Atlantic have reservations about America's prosecution of the terror war. An editorial in The London Daily Telegraph on May 28 claimed that America's main problem in the war on terrorism is its coddling of Saudi Arabia. The paper argued that the Saudis fear a democratic, free leadership of Iraq, since it would provide Saudi citizens with an example of life that doesn't include the Royal Family. "Carrying on as before," the Telegraph noted, "means propping up a regime that violates the basic tenets of the State of the Union Address - including the rule of law, property rights, women's rights, and freedom of religion. All this is a recipe for more bin Ladens and September 11s."

That said, may of our allies in Europe have stood tall against terrorism. According to Canada's National Post, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, on the occasion of the NATO-Russia summit, sent an unequivocal message to terrorists: "You will never be able to vanquish us. Give up this madness." And Russia and many other elements of the former Soviet Bloc are now sitting at the NATO table as allies against a common enemy.

The United States has its work cut out for it if allies and foot-draggers are to be persuaded to work together against terrorists. Much of the groundwork has been laid at the NATO-Russia summit, but the rest lies with us.

America hears a lot of complaints about "cowboys" when it takes action, but when dealing with recalcitrants and fence-sitters, action is so much more definitive than words. Expect to hear more specific complaints in the next few weeks, complaints that must be addressed if the alliance is to hold.

Andrea West is DefenseWatch Veterans' Editor. She can be reached at defensewatchvet@yahoo.com.

By Robert G. Williscroft

On Sunday, May 26, 2002, the New York Times Magazine featured an 8,000-word cover story by staff reporter Bill Keller entitled "Nuclear Nightmares." I first heard about this article on an early morning Public Radio interview with Keller broadcast over KPCC out of Pasadena City College, northeast of Los Angeles. The short interview focused on the last few paragraphs of Keller's article wherein he reported the results of a computer model created by Matthew McKinzie, who is a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

It is quite useful to understand just who Matthew McKinzie and the NRDC really are. The NRDC is a Washington, D.C., based environmental group that claims approximately 500,000 members worldwide and a staff of "respected scientists, lawyers, and environmental specialists." It has offices in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

In fact, the NRDC is a left-wing organization that has been trying to eliminate anything nuclear since its inception in 1970. Dr. McKinzie was initially a researcher at Los Alamos. Apparently his left-wing politics lead him to get caught up in the so-called "international peace movement" that was surreptitiously promoted and funded by the international communist movement of that period, and he ended up as a "staff scientist" with the NRDC. At the NRDC, McKinzie focused on generating computer programs that purport to demonstrate the effects of nuclear explosions on civilian populations and municipal infrastructures.

Although I have not had the opportunity to examine McKinzie's specific computer models, physics is a two-way street. One can start with a set of conditions, apply them to a mathematical model that contains certain assumptions, and generate a result based upon those conditions, the assumptions, and the math and physics contained in the model. Or, one can start with a result, apply both the original conditions and the underlying math and physics, and from this one can generate the assumptions used in the model.

This "reverse engineering" approach has its pitfalls, since the math and physics one applies, while certainly one of the constants in this problem, can be from one of several basic approaches to the original problem. Nevertheless, it is quite possible, with very little effort, to zero in on the basic assumptions McKinzie has used in his models.

Another interesting point about Dr. McKinzie and the NRDC, is that he has been applying these models to various scenarios as requested by other members of the anti-nuclear left: to studies in Canada, in Pakistan, and elsewhere. Always with the same message: Nuclear is bad.

The predicted results presented by McKinzie and his fellow travelers are always horrific, always unthinkable, always obvious justification for doing away with anything nuclear.

Here is the predicted result, taken directly from Keller's article:

Here is how McKinzie arrived at these results. First, he assumed that the area surrounding the explosion had a certain population density. Whatever exact figure he used, I have no quarrel with the number; I am certain it was in the ballpark. Then he assumed a blast effect calculated from previous experiments, most accomplished in the 1950s at the Nevada test site. He probably modified these results to account for more modern technology, and since none of these tests were ever performed on such a small device, he modified his assumptions to accommodate this fact.

I take issue with several parts of this process. The measurements made in the 1950s were taken at a significant distance from the blasts. They were made with equipment that was relatively primitive by today's standards. The explosive devices were crude by today's standards, and there really is no way to extrapolate the results of these explosions to what happens with a modern 1-kiloton device. Furthermore, these measurements were made across a flat expanse of desert, not in a city environment, surrounded by substantial high-rise buildings.

This really is the key. If you take the simple results from the 1950s tests, extrapolate them down to 1 kiloton, and apply the results to the presumed population distributed across a half-mile radius, the predicted results will be very much like what McKinzie predicted.

The moment you insert dozens of substantial buildings, however, most built with concrete and steel construction, the entire problem changes radically. The force of any blast is transmitted through the air - no air, no blast effect, despite what you see on sci-fi flicks. As this spherical cauldron expands during the first microseconds, almost immediately it encounters very dense walls of steel reinforced concrete. The closest buildings will not be gutted so much as destroyed. The heat probably will vaporize sufficient material at the bases of these buildings to cause them to collapse.

Considering just the damage without the blast, the buildings probably would tend to collapse inward, tilting toward the center. In our scenario, however, a portion of the blast will be funneled upward, somewhat like a chimney, expanding as it rises. This will tend to counter the inward falling tendency, so that the buildings will tend to fall into their footprint. It may also be that some of the taller buildings will actually be forced outward by the rising blast.

By the second or third layer of buildings, the blast will have been substantially absorbed in the horizontal plane. The rising blast plume will certainly affect the building upper floors, but the buildings in direct contact with the blast are goners anyway.

Of course the people in the immediate vicinity will be killed. But if you are two or three buildings away, especially if these buildings are substantial, you may not even be hurt by the blast.

There will be an initial flood of neutrons, and they will kill if they go through you, even if you are a mile away. Thus, along the thoroughfares directly exposed to the blast, there will be some serious radiation damage, and they may also funnel the blast to a greater distance as well. The several layers of reinforced concrete buildings will stop the neutrons in other directions. Immediately following the neutrons will be gamma (high energy photons) and beta (high energy electrons) radiation. The gamma will also funnel along the thoroughfares, but with considerable less damage. It will be completely absorbed by the first layer of concrete. Beta can be stopped by a few inches of air or your skin. Unless you are directly exposed to a great deal, beta will cause no problem. Alpha is really not radiation at all, but helium nuclei. It is only dangerous if actually taken inside the body. Typically, it is present in the fallout from a nuclear explosion.

So far we have some pretty serious damage out to maybe three buildings and along the exposed thoroughfares. We have some radiation damage from neutrons and gamma along the same thoroughfares, and some localized beta damage.

The fallout is totally dependent upon the kind of explosion: basically, how dirty it was. Small nukes are especially designed to be very clean, that is without any major radiation after-effects. Thus, the blast plume that shoots up through the buildings will be relatively clean; it will contain little alpha producing substances.

The bottom line is that such a bomb exploded on a typical New York street corner (Times Square in Keller's example) will not produce anywhere near the level of damage predicted by McKinzie. In fact, a 10-kiloton bomb will not produce the kind of damage he predicted!

So much for NRDC science.

Keller opened his article with an account of a conversation he had with Russian nuclear physicist Vladimir Shikalov. Shikalov, who had participated in the Chernobyl cleanup following the 1986 reactor accident, described a possible terrorist scenario where about a cup of radioactive cesium-137 would be surreptitiously sprayed into the air inside Disneyland. Keller estimated that this action probably would shut down the place for good and constitute a "staggering strike at Americans' sense of innocence."

Shikalov believes - correctly - that most people are irrationally afraid of radiation. He indicated that he would have no problem visiting Disneyland following such an attack. He thought he might carry his own food and drink and destroy his clothing afterward, as a general safety precaution, but he firmly believes that American's fear of radiation would push us to an extreme reaction to such an attack.

To his credit, Keller included this story in his article, but he soon left its common- sense view for more extreme anti-nuclear views like McKinzie's. I responded to Keller's article in some detail on The New York Times discussion board linked to the article. In response, I received an email from which I have extracted the following passage:

I would appreciate somebody answering this guy's question, because I'm not sure I have an answer that makes sense.

Robert G. Williscroft is DefenseWatch Navy Editor. He can be reached at dwnavyeditor@argee.net.

By Lt. Col. Matthew Dodd

Remember the Clinton administration and its fixation on public-opinion polls that told the president what to do and told the American public what they were thinking?

With Vice President Dick Cheney all but guaranteeing another large-scale terrorist attack on U.S. soil, I decided to conduct my own poll of informed or un-informed (you make the call) Pentagon employees concerning the possibility of combat operations in Iraq. Let me share those good, bad, and ugly Pentagon perspectives to provoke some thought and discussion for all Americans.

Here's the good news:

The U.S. military establishment will finally get its chance to execute the war plans it has been practicing and war-gaming ever since Gulf War I. The opportunity to fight the last war again has some of the older establishment leadership giddy. These senior leaders are very familiar with the maps, scripts, game plans and scenarios for another war with Iraq, and are very comfortable with and confident about their ability to plug themselves and their organizations into the chosen war plan that will be executed according to the accurate timelines established in the hundreds (maybe thousands) of times that the scenario has been exercised.

They believe they can finally silence critics who falsely accused them of the folly of preparing for the last war. They view this opportunity to justify their staunch defense of the status quo as a once-in-a-lifetime event. "See, I told you so" is the next Pentagon mantra for these dangerous warriors.

On a more positive note, any U.S. combat operations against Iraq will show the world that we are serious and willing to take a proactive - instead of reactive - stance against state-condoned, sponsored or encouraged terrorism. Terrorists like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden prey on complacency and perceived weaknesses of those they consider enemies. When the president of the United States says that he will not tolerate certain types of behavior that threaten his people and their way of life, and then he shows the determined resolve to back up his words by any means possible, the terrorists do take notice.

President Bush's words and actions are slowly restoring U.S. credibility in the international arena, following eight years of bureaucratic double-talk and carefully selected, politically-motivated actions and inactions by President Clinton that contributed to its decline.

Successful combat operations against Iraq should put an end to the bottomless pits known as Operations Southern and Northern Watch. The constant aerial patrols to enforce the southern and northern no-fly zones in Iraq have become a drain on combat units, budgets and morale.

Here's the bad news:

With skepticism increasing about our actual degree of success in destroying and neutralizing the al Qaeda terrorist network (note the vice president's warnings about possible new terrorist acts against the United States), one has to wonder about the military wisdom of getting fully committed in a major war against Iraq at this time. Large scale deployment of U.S. forces and resources against Iraq may be seen as a great opportunity for al Qaeda's 'sleeper cells' to once again strike the U.S. homeland.

As pointed out in recent DefenseWatch magazine articles, getting rid of Saddam Hussein is the obvious first step. But what about the follow-on second and third order effects or consequences? Those next steps seem unclear and uncertain. Hopefully, before we commit to combat in Iraq we will have a clear understanding of the desired end-state and a reasonable plan to achieve it.

As mentioned above, executing a well-scripted and rehearsed plan offers some advantages. However, we must be careful that we do not get so wedded to the plan that we lose our flexibility. If we are too predictable, then we will make it easier for Saddam to seize the initiative against us.

Transforming a military during a war - especially one that seems unwilling to transform - is a monumental challenge for even the most forceful, persuasive and effective leaders including Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Timing is everything, and transformation must take a back seat if we have troops fighting and dying in Iraq. Those resistant to transformation will likely justify their inertia and bureaucratice resistance by arguing that we must rely on the current "legacy" forces, doctrine and leadership.

Here's the ugly news:

Saddam Hussein is surely smart enough to know that he and his regime will be the targets if President Bush decides to order a U.S. attack. Like any cornered and desperate prey, he can be expected to fight with reckless abandon. The threat our troops can expect to face will likely be much more deadly than exposure to questionable vaccinations and burning oil fields.

Anyone involved with the planning of any combat operations against Iraq should anticipate and design pre-emptive measures to address further Middle East turmoil, regional instability and increased anti-Western radical Islamic fundamentalism deliberately incited by Iraq to complicate the U.S. campaign.

Finally, war with Iraq will most likely mean the devastation of symbolic and historic Baghdad. The images on CNN will be absolutely horrific!

In gathering these polling results, it was necessary to solicit input from some trusted Pentagon sources: a spouse, a friend, a son, a Christian, a parent, a sibling, a husband, a Marine, a father, a conservative, an active-duty uniformed service member and a contributing editor to a weekly online military issues magazine.

Unlike the other, more widely disseminated public media polls, these polling perspectives are 100-percent accurate with the participants' input with no margin of error. You see, inspired by today's Army, I was a poll of one.

Lt. Col. Matthew Dodd is the pen name of an active-duty Marine Corps officer stationed at the Pentagon. He can be reached at mattdodd1775@hotmail.com.

Editor's Note: The following DoD announcement was posted at the DefenseLink web portal on May 23, 2002. Readers of DefenseWatch were first informed of Project SHAD from articles by Contributing Editor Robert G. Williscroft, who detailed the background of the secret tests in two articles, "Project SHAD: Lesson from a Secret Experiment," (Apr. 10, 2002), and "Secret Tests May Have Harmed Over 2,000 Sailors," (Apr. 24, 2002).

IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 23, 2002

DOD RELEASES PROJECT SHAD FACT SHEETS

The Department of Defense today released detailed fact sheets on six Cold War-era chemical and biological warfare tests. Release of the information is part of an on-going effort to provide information needed by the Department of Veterans Affairs to respond to some veterans' claims that tests conducted in the 1960s affected their health. A DoD investigative team found that simulants were used in lieu of chemical and biological warfare agents in many of these tests, but a number did involve the use of actual chemical and biological warfare agents.

Of the six tests detailed in today's release, three used live nerve agents, one used a live biological agent, and one used a simulant that, while believed to be harmless at the time, has subsequently been found to be hazardous. The sixth test used a non-hazardous simulant. This information and a list of personnel assigned to the ships and units involved, has been provided to the VA.

In the 1960s, the DoD conducted a series of chemical and biological warfare vulnerability tests on naval ships known collectively as Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD). Some veterans have expressed concern that their participation in these tests may have exposed them to harmful substances. DoD has released fact sheets on the individual tests as the information became available. Six fact sheets were previously released.

The Department of Defense has been investigating the project since August 2000, when the Department of Veterans Affairs asked the DoD for information needed to clarify claims information from servicemembers who believed they might have been exposed to harmful substances during their participation in SHAD tests. VA claims experts needed to know what substances veterans may have been exposed to and who might have been exposed. DoD agreed to deliver that information if it could be found.

An investigative team located and searched records to identify which ships and units were involved in the tests, when the tests took place, and to what substances their crews and other personnel may have been exposed. This required declassification of test-related ship and personnel information, without release of military information that remains classified for valid operational security reasons.

The SHAD tests were intended to show the vulnerability of Navy ships to chemical and biological warfare agents. By learning how those agents would disperse, military planners could improve procedures to protect crewmembers and decontaminate ships.

The investigation has been a slow process, partially because in the cold war era, this kind of military information was classified. Also, investigators are searching through archived, poorly filed information about events that occurred four decades ago. While the SHAD program plans, part of the larger Deseret Test Center program, may have encompassed as many as a hundred individual tests given unrelated names, many tests were never actually executed. Because it is difficult to determine which tests are SHAD-related, investigators plan to look at all Deseret Test Center's chemical and biological tests conducted between 1963 and 1970.

Data DoD collected on the fact sheets for each completed test include the test dates, identification of ships and personnel involved; test locations; simulants, agents, tracer material, and decontaminants used; and test methods employed.

The DoD investigation into SHAD tests continues, and additional fact sheets will be released when more is known. Veterans who believe they were involved in SHAD tests and desire medical evaluations should call the VA's Helpline at (800) 749-8387. SHAD fact sheets are available on line at the deploymentlink website.