McGHEE: Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the potential threat of weapons of mass destruction or weapons of terror. What kind of threat do you think chemical and biological weapons pose to the U.S. public and where is this threat coming from?

SELDEN: I think chemical biological weapons pose an increasingly serious threat, but it's not necessarily from the same --

McGHEE: Do you want me to ask the question again?

SELDEN: There is an increasingly serious threat from chemical and biological weapons; that's very true, but I think we should be careful not to overestimate the threat. I think we should also be much more concerned about domestic terrorist groups and foreign terrorist groups.

McGHEE: The Domestic Preparedness Program was established in 1996 to provide funding for the DOD to enhance the capability of federal, state, and local responders in incidents involving nuclear chemical and biological weapons.

Now, we're almost 18 months into that. How do you think it has progressed? Do you think it's too ambitious?

SELDEN: No, not at all. I think if anything, the Domestic Preparedness Program has to be expanded. I think we have to look into antidote stockpiles and better funding for emergency equipment purchases.

McGHEE: Do you think that the way that it was established was good? Was it needed?

SELDEN: Absolutely. I think what it's done is raised awareness about a critical issue. But beyond that we need to maintain a sustaining focus, and I'm very worried that as time goes on this will be sort of a blip on the radar, and people will forget about it.

McGHEE: With all of these federal agencies involved, each with our own response teams and research labs, do you think there's a danger of duplicity, and the danger of the whole thing just becoming a bureaucratic nightmare?

SELDEN: That's always a danger in a situation like this. You have to coordinate so many federal agencies, plus state and local.

(Pause)

McGHEE: I'll start that one again.

With all of these federal agencies becoming involved with their own response teams and their own research labs, do you think there's a danger of duplicity, and a danger of the whole thing just becoming a bureaucratic nightmare?

SELDEN: I think there is the distinct possibility that a program like this can get sidetracked often to a lot of bureaucratic workers. You have to understand that you're trying to coordinate a lot of different federal agencies; the FBI, FEMA, the Defense Department, a whole host of others, the Public Health Service, as well as state and local officials, and first responders.

All this is very difficult, and yes there's going to be a lot of bureaucratic and fighting; however, the end goal I think is the right course to head towards. I think as long as people maintain their focus, we should be in the right direction.

McGHEE: What then do you think has been the strengths and weaknesses with America's Domestic Preparedness Program?

SELDEN: I think the main strength is that it's raised awareness on a very important issue. People really didn't know how to handle this sort of thing before. Now we're looking at it and realizing that there are potential solutions out there. There are ways to cope with these sorts of incidence.

I think the real weakness are sort of in the follow on. And this isn't really so much a criticism of the program, which I think is kind of in its nascent stages; it's simply a matter of we have to maintain the focus, and we have to look into some of the more critical things that are missing from it right now.

One is antidote stockpiles. You could quite easily I believe maintain stockpiles of antidotes for some of the more common biological and chemical agents throughout there. That's one area that really needs to be looked into. Another area is providing adequate emergency equipment for first responders.

Your first responders are going to be the people who are going to be out there on the front line. They're going to be the first ones there, and they need the proper equipment, otherwise they just become additional victims. So I think if we can work on those two areas now, we'll be in much better shape.

Overall, I think the program needs to maintain a consistent focus, and go out into the out years, because otherwise five years from now if there's an incident, if we're going to stop, and they're going to try to rely on their training that they had years before, and it's not going to come to them very quickly. So they need some kind of ongoing refresher course and things like that.

McGHEE: Going on from what you said about stockpiling vaccinations, do you think that we should be doing that for the entire population? Is this a realistic idea?

SELDEN: I don't think it's necessary to stockpile antidotes for the entire population of the United States. I don't think that's feasible or reasonable. I think what we can look at is what are the upper bounds of potential terrorist biological weapons scenarios, and stockpile towards those. And that would be in the tens of thousands most likely.

McGHEE: So say if we did start stockpiling, say antidotes for anthrax, where do you think we should be keeping those. If an incident was say in L.A., and something happened in New York, and the vaccines were kept in Chicago, I mean, would that be useful? Would they be useful?

SELDEN: You could stockpile several places around the country, and that would be the useful way of doing it.

McGHEE: A recent GAO report suggested that greater emphasis should be placed on threat assessment, and prior to the creation of the DPP, the Rate (inaudible) Program, and the various other initiatives, do you think such an assessment was undertaken, and do you think there's a need for greater threat assessment?

MR. SELDON: I think there's a need for greater threat assessment. I'm not necessarily sure that it has to be done in a risk management model, as the GAO report was suggesting. But more threat assessment is definitely a good thing. However, I believe local people are probably best capable of assessing the particular risks of their area with some expertise drawn from the Defense Department and FEMA.

McGHEE: There is a school of thought which says, that rather than focusing our attention on defense, we should be looking at prevention tools, such as foreign policy and international diplomacy, more effective at diminishing the threat to U.S. citizens.

What are you thoughts on this?

MR. SELDON: The Biological Weapons Convention is a weak and unfair viable agreement, dating back to 1972. Now, there are numerous proposals on the table now to strengthen it, but we have to be sort of focused on what the real threat is. And if we say the real threat is a terrorist incident, an international convention doesn't really get to that. However, the BWC can reduce the threat from state actors, and that's definitely worth the effort, but we have to be aware of its limits.

McGHEE: What about through adjusting America's foreign policy? What do you think?

MR. SELDON: I think the primary threat that we faced for biological weapons is not necessarily from abroad; it's from apocalyptic terrorist groups and it's from domestic groups which are not affected by U.S. foreign policy.

McGHEE: Okay.

MS. : Just to expand, when you say it's really important to do the stockpiling and to get equipment to the local teams, how do you think this should be funded? I mean is this federal money? Is it local taxpayers' money? Because right now the DPP is. Each city gets like $300,000, but it's not enough to buy equipment.

Do you want to elaborate?

MR. SELDON: Right. I think there needs to be a serious look at what sort of funding you need to have the right kinds of equipment. For example, a single decontamination unit that's big enough to fit for a hospital is going to cost around $100,000. So that $300,000 that's been allocated per city isn't going to go very far.

The question is, exactly how much does each city need by its size. And that's something that has to be worked out in the interagency process at the federal level in conjunction with some of the local authorities.

The money should be coming from the federal government for something like this, I believe. I don't think it's an area that local governments can afford to jump into, but I do believe it's an area where a certain amount of federal investment is a very prudent step.

McGHEE: Do you think the whole issue's receiving enough attention in government from Congress?

MR. SELDON: I think the issue's receiving a fair amount of attention. My hope is that it will be sustained. Things like this have a tendency to become sort of blips on the radar screen. People pay attention to them for a very brief period of time. It's a sexy issue. All of a sudden people are interested. And then it disappears, and the next big thing comes along, and everybody forgets about this. And all this is for not if people don't keep a focus on what the threat is and where it's coming from, and what can be done practically to control it.

McGHEE: Do you think America will ever reach an ultimate stage of preparedness against biological chemical weapons?

MR. SELDON: I mean that's sort of an impossible question to answer. You can through international actions raise the cost and the difficulty of producing biological weapons through things like the Biological Weapons Convention, which does make it more difficult to produce these agents.

You can make it well known that you do have a certain level of preparedness, which then reduces the attractiveness of using these sorts of weapons in the United States. So there are ways of increasing the level of preparedness and making it much less likely a scenario, and I think that's really what you have to go towards. It's not a matter of absolute versus nothing; it's a matter of being better prepared, and I think we're capable of doing that.

MS. : I have a question. This is jumping back a little back.

MR. SELDON: Right.

MS. : You say issues like this tend to become blips on the radar screen, which is true of just about any issue which the media pays attention to.

Where has the attention for this come from? What was the momentum which raised this issue? And in your opinion, how can you keep the attention focused without causing hysteria or without letting it fall into oblivion?

MR. SELDON: Right.

Attention for this issue really started up with Umshon Rikkio (phonetic) in 1995 with its Tokyo subway gas attack, and that sort of started the whole -- people looking into this issue saying, oh, my God, we're not really prepared to cope with these sorts of things. And I think that was a very healthy sort of jump start to the whole process.

In terms of maintaining staying focus, I think it's really a matter of making sure that the congressional focus is there, so that the dollars are continually appropriated, and at the federal level we're able to go out and train people at the local level, and maintain that level of preparedness, in addition to things like antidote stockpiling, which would be an ongoing process as well. So really, the place where focus needs to be maintained is the Congress.

MS. : Kate asked you earlier before about all these different federal agencies and the skeptical point of view of the event. We've got the FBI -- in the hearings yesterday, they want to have their own laughs. CBD, the National Guard, Army Reserves; all these different components each have their own emergency response team.

I don't know if you could just elaborate a little bit. Is there one federal arm that you think should take the lead? Should we just have one person with all the consequence management capabilities or is it necessary to have each, the Marines, and the Army, and the FBI each to have a response team?

MR. SELDON: The way it's set up now, I think it's important to incorporate all these different federal organizations, because they all bring a different thing to the table.

FEMA has experience in consequence management, therefore FEMA takes the consequence management side in its lead role for that. The FBI obviously has the best criminal investigative procedures, so they take the role in that. DOD has a lot of expertise in dealing with hazardous materials, so that expertise can be drawn on, and that expertise is scattered somewhat within the Department of Defense. So the Marine Corps has a team that's very specialized team and ready to deal with these sorts of things. The Army has teams that are ready to deal particularly with hazardous materials.

So it's not such a matter of it being spread out for bureaucratic purposes; it's mostly a matter that the level of expertise that you would need to cope with this thing is spread out among the Federal Government, and in order to draw on all of that, you have to bring in all these different agencies. The question is, how do you coordinate it and who sits on top? And that's a question that really hasn't been answered just yet.

McGHEE: Thank you.

MR. SELDON: Okay. Anything else?

MS. MCGEE: No.

MR. SELDON: Do you want to revisit the first question or anything?

McGHEE: Would you like to revisit the first question? Did you feel that your answer wasn't --

MR. SELDON: I don't think it was very good.

McGHEE: You would like to redo it. Yeah, that's no problem

MS. : Why don't you give him the first couple questions.

MR. SELDON: I was forclymphed (phonetic).

McGHEE: Oh, don't worry about it.

McGHEE: Okay, we'll get back to the first question then.

Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the potential threat of weapons of mass destruction or weapons of terror. What kind of threat do you think chemical and biological weapons pose to the U.S. public, and where is this threat coming from?

MR. SELDON: Chemical and biological weapons pose a serious threat to the U.S. public, and I think what we have to be aware of is that there are a lot of terrorist groups out there that have begun to experiment with these types of agents.

The FBI has investigated over 100 incidents alone this year. Most of those turn out to be hoaxes, but the few that are real could be very, very serious.

McGHEE: The Domestic Preparedness Program was set up in 1996 to provide funding for the DOD to enhance the capability of federal, state, and local responders. Now, we're almost 18 months into that. How do you think it has progressed? Do you think it was too ambitious?

MR. SELDON: Not at all. I think it was a well thought out proposal at first. I think the follow on needs to come through much harder.

Actually, I like the first one better, so let's skip this one.

McGHEE: Okay. It was just the first question.

MR. SELDON: Yeah, so just the first one.

MS. : Anything else you want to add?

MR. SELDON: No, I don't think so. I think we're okay.

End of Proceedings as Recorded