[118392] in Cypherpunks
IP: 'Americans will die on U.S. soil' from high tech terror
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Sun Sep 26 17:26:56 1999
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Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1999 10:55:09 -0400
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From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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From: believer@telepath.com
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 08:40:08 -0500
To: ignition-point@precision-d.com
Subject: IP: 'Americans will die on U.S. soil' from high tech terror
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Source: World Tribune
http://www.worldtribune.com/index-two-text.html
Commission: 'Americans will die on American soil' from high tech terror
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Thursday, September 23, 1999
WASHINGTON -- The United States is increasingly vulnerable to
high-technology terrorism, particularly a biological weapons attack, that
could result in massive casualties, a presidential commission says.
The Commission on National Security, sponsored by President Bill Clinton
and Congress, released a 143-page report on Tuesday that presented a dire
forecast of the prospect of terrorism in the United States. The commission
was composed of 25 former defense officials who served under U.S.
administrations.
"For many years to come, Americans will become increasingly less secure,"
the report said. "America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile
attack on our homeland, and our military superiority will not entirely
protect us. Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large
numbers. Threats to American security will be more diffuse, harder to
anticipate and more difficult to neutralize than ever before."
The key threat is terrorist use of biological weapons. The report says
terrorists are acquiring biological weapons and other technological tools
for attacks.
"The most serious threat to our security may consist of unannounced
attacks on American cities by sub-national groups using genetically
engineered pathogens," the report said. "In the hands of despots, the new
science could become a tool of genocide on an unprecedented scale."
The report says terrorists have greater access to technology and can
launch cyber attacks that disrupt air traffic control systems and create
hundreds of air collisions and accidents.
Commission members said the report reflects intelligence reports and
follows similar studies by the Pentagon and Congress. "This report is
hardly apocalyptic," former Senator Warren Rudman said. "I have all the
facts."
The report follows similar studies released by the Pentagon in 1997 and
Congress last assessing the post-Cold War threat of terrorism to the United
States.
U.S. President Bill Clinton agreed. "The possibility that terrorists will
threaten us with weapons of mass destruction cannot be met with
complacency," he said at the United Nations in New York.
Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov called for international
cooperation to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to
terrorists. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Russia would support
a UN conference or a special session of the General Assembly in 2000 on
ways of combatting terrorism.
"Militant nationalism, separatism, terrorism and extremism regardless of
their forms, have no borders," he said. "Nobody is safe."
Thursday, September 23, 1999
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-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
