NEG/TERRORISM/BIOLOGICAL-CHEMICAL

STATUS QUO IS ACTING TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM

HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY ARE ALREADY BEING SPENT TO FIGHT TERRORISM

Figure ES.1: Breakdown of Overall Federal Budget to Combat Terrorism

Unconventional Terrorism Preparation and Response

($618 million)

Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism

($1.4 billion)

Defense Against Terrorism

($8.4 billion)

Assistance to First Responders

($315 million)

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A flood of federal funding for counterterrorism activities has created new roles for various federal departments and agencies -- the Department of Defense, Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to name the most prominent. Funding and programmatic activities to fight terrorism have burgeoned in recent years among these entities. The federal counterterrorism budget grew from $6.5 billion in FY1998 to $9.6 billion in FY1999, and over $10 billion is allocated for the current fiscal year, of which $1.8 billion is dedicated to countering terrorism with weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

USA CONGRESS HAS PASSED LAWS TO TRY AND DETER AND PUNISH BIOLOGICAL TERRORISM

LAURIE GARRETT, Pulitzer Prize -- winning science and medical writer for Newsday January, 2001 / February, 2001 Foreign Affairs SECTION: CHALLENGES FOR THE NEXT PRESIDENT; Pg. 76 HEADLINE: The Nightmare of Bioterrorism //VT2002acsln

IN RESPONSE to such threats, Congress has passed a number of laws aimed at making it harder for anyone -- domestic or foreign -- to attack America with biological weapons. In 1989, Congress passed the Biological Weapons Act, outlawing the possession, trade, sale, or manufacture of a biological substance "for use as a weapon." In 1991, it enacted an embargo, soon enforced against Iraq, barring U.S. companies from trading with countries believed to be developing biological weapons. After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996, allowing federal authorities to arrest anyone who even "threatens" to develop or use biological weapons. And the following year, by order of Congress, the CDC named 24 infectious organisms and 12 toxins as "restricted agents," the use or possession of which requires a federal permit. Although these measures now provide legal instruments for federal law enforcement officials, it is impossible to judge how effectively they have, or have not, deterred biological terrorism.